Public Opinion on Nuclear Energy and Voting Behavior: The Political and Social Divisions Over the Energy Issues in Japan After the Fukushima Accident

After the Fukushima accident in 2011, Japan witnessed a sudden upsurge in anti-nuclear demonstrations. The widespread demonstrations were linked to the drastic change in public opinion about nuclear energy. Over 60% of the population expressed support for the immediate abolishment of nuclear power plants or at least for the closure of a significant number of power plants. Simultaneously, renewable energy increased by 4.5% within four years after the accident, thus, reflecting the growing expectation among citizens for this type of energy source. Nevertheless, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is the only major party advocating for the further use of nuclear energy, keeps winning elections. This may be perceived as a confusing situation because nuclear energy has been one of the primary issues of recent elections. One may ask how and why this incongruence between public opinion on nuclear energy and electoral results has occurred. One may further ask who is in favor of the anti-nuclear drive and who is supporting the LDP during elections. To shed light on these questions, we conducted a survey toward the end of 2017 of 80,000 residents of the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan area. By employing the data collected, we investigated the factors that explain people’s support for an anti-nuclear energy source and voting behavior at the election. The items in the questionnaire included (1) individual socio-economic information such as gender, generation, annual income, number of children and affiliation to the organization; (2) right-left ideological positions; (3) psychological factors such as the degree of grievance caused by the nuclear catastrophe; and (4) attitude to the current governmental policies. Our analysis revealed that different factors explain the support of an anti-nuclear drive and political party. The grievance caused by the nuclear catastrophe explained the people’s attitude toward nuclear energy; this goes beyond ideological positions. However, with reference to voting, the performance of the current government, especially the success of the economic policy better explains their voting behavior as that put forward by retrospective voting theory (Fiorina 1981). As a result of this different logic, the current differences between political and social views have occurred. One important criterion of a democracy is policy congruence between policy outcomes and the preference of the broader public (Dahl 1973: 1-2). However, various new policies such as an energy policy often deviate from this classical assumption because the people’s preference on energy may not necessarily be in accordance with political parties’ ambitions. Our empirical case study shed light on the broader discussion of this incongruence between public preference and the actual party politics. Dahl, R. A. 1973. Polyarchy: Participation and opposition. Yale University Press. Fiorina, M. 1981. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.