May 18, 2021

All four opinion polls conducted by the Asahi Shimbun, Kyodo News, the ANN news network, and the Fuji-Sankei group, show that a majority of the respondents call for the postponement or the cancellation of the Tokyo Olympic/Paralympic Games.

According to Akahata on May 16, the percentage of those who answered that the Games "should be postponed again" and "should be cancelled" in an ANN poll was 33% and 49%, respectively. In an Asahi poll, the "re-postponement" accounted for 40% and the "cancellation" 43%.

In a Kyodo poll, 71.5% of respondents said that they do "not appreciate" the Suga government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, up 15 points over April. The same applied to the Asahi survey (67%, up six points), the ANN (63%, up six points), and the Fuji-Sankei (69.5%, up 9.8 points).

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira at a press conference on May 17 pointed out that more than 80% of respondents in surveys expressed that they are frustrated at the government's "slow" rollout of coronavirus vaccines. Koike said, "An overwhelming majority of the public think that the Olympics should not be held, given the present circumstances."

He added, "The Suga government should take these survey results seriously and properly organize a smooth vaccination drive."