Conservative Victory Predicted in Japan : Election: Analysts predict a shaky leadership even if the ruling Liberal Democrats retain power.

Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party, a conservative organization, was expected to overcome a Socialist surge and retain its 35-year control of the House of Representatives as voters went to the polls in a general election today.

The polls were unanimous in forecasting a conservative victory, although the Asahi, Yomiuri, Mainichi and Nihon Keizai newspapers and the Kyodo News Service all predicted a relative setback for Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu’s party.

Predictions in the five polls ranged from a narrow victory by winning about 260 seats to a triumph of more than 280, contrasted with the 310 seats that the Liberal Democrats held after the last election four years ago. A majority in the 512-seat lower house of Parliament, which elects the prime minister, is 257.

All of the polls found that about a third of the 90.6 million eligible voters were still undecided after a 15-day campaign that focused almost entirely on domestic issues.

Kaifu ended his stumping in Tokyo on Saturday with a plea to voters to stand behind the Liberal Democrats and accept this country’s 3% tax on consumption, which he said is needed to fund increased welfare for Japan’s rapidly aging society. Takako Doi, Socialist Party chairwoman, told Tokyo voters that only by throwing the conservatives out could clean politics be restored and the consumption tax abolished.

Analysts said that even a Liberal Democrat victory is likely to leave a shaky leadership at the helm of the world’s No. 2 economic superpower.

Last July, the Liberal Democrats for the first time lost their majority in the upper house in the aftermath of a rebellion by women, farmers and shopkeepers against the ruling party’s “money politics,” its broken 1986 election promise not to adopt the consumption tax, and liberalization of farm imports.

The fact that Kaifu can no longer move legislation through both houses of Parliament on his own party’s strength alone is expected to complicate the prime minister’s task of trying to ease frictions with the United States. A third round of U.S.-Japan negotiations aimed at removing impediments to trade, a top priority in the Bush Administration, will be conducted here next Thursday and Friday.

Ruling party leaders are expected to try to work out some kind of cooperative relationship with at least one of the opposition parties to secure support for legislation. Posturing during the lower house election campaign has forestalled moves to establish a de facto coalition government.

“Political instability will continue for years,” predicted Keizo Matsumoto of the Nippon Credit Bank’s foreign exchange department.

A staff member of the Cabinet Research Office agreed. “I’m more worried about the period after the election than the election itself,” he said.

Pollsters were unanimous in forecasting major gains for the Socialists, whose fortunes have been revived by Doi, their popular chairwoman. Four years ago, the Socialists, who advocate unarmed neutralism, won only 86 seats, their lowest ever. This time, they are expected to expand their bloc to 120 or more--and perhaps even 140--the polls predicted.

Japan has not had a change in the governing party since 1948, when the Liberal Democrats’ predecessors regained power after two coalitions with Socialist participation led the country for 17 months.

Kyodo News Agency reported that farmers, who joined last July’s revolt against the Liberal Democrats’ moves to open markets to agricultural imports, were expected to return to the governing party fold, while other rebel voters were uneasy about voting for a change in government.

“In a crisis situation, Japanese voters become very conservative,” Ronald Morse, a Japan specialist in the Library of Congress, told Kyodo in Washington.