The consumption tax hike was the most tweeted about topic in regards to the House of Councillors election for the 20 days from June 27, a week before the election was announced, to July 16, according to an analysis by The Yomiuri Shimbun.
The analysis was based on posts on Twitter related to the major points of contention in the upper house poll.
It is estimated that among the posts analyzed, nearly 80 percent were posted by people in their 30s or younger.
The result suggested that people see the raising of the consumption tax rate as an issue that affects their lives more than public pension issues.
The analysis was conducted using a system by Hotto Link Inc., a Tokyo-based information technology company.
Ten percent of all tweets in Japanese were randomly collected, then those related to the upper house election were selected. The research analyzed a total of about 542,000 tweets, including retweets.
The number of tweets about the scheduled consumption tax rate hike was the highest of all tweets related to points of contention in the election, at about 34,600.
On July 4, when the upper house election was announced, the number of tweets on the issue accounted for the most among all tweets related to the election. The number of tweets on the tax rate issue rapidly increased between July 14 and 16.
Among Twitter users, there was also a focus on other matters related to consumption tax, such as the fact that women's sanitary products will not be subject to a reduced tax rate after the hike.
In campaigning for the election, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have vowed to raise the consumption tax rate to 10 percent in October as scheduled.
The opposition parties have unanimously voiced their objections to the plan.
It is assumed that online debates about the consumption tax heated up on social media sites partly because the issue was a clear conflict point between the ruling and opposition camps.
It has been believed that the issue of public pensions and other social security systems is the main point of dispute in the election.
But in terms of the final number of opinions on Twitter, the issue was ranked second, with about 29,600 tweets, although it had attracted the highest number of tweets until the middle of the campaign period.
Among other major points of dispute, the issue of diplomacy and national security ranked third with about 28,200 tweets, and amending the Constitution was fourth with about 24,800 tweets.
In a nationwide public opinion survey conducted by The Yomiuri Shimbun from July 12 to 14, respondents chose the policy issues most important to them in the election.
Forty-one percent of respondents cited the issue of public pensions and other social security systems; 19 percent cited the issue of economic and employment conditions; and 10 percent the issue of diplomacy and national security.
In the opinion survey, the percentages of respondents who chose the issues of consumption tax and constitutional revision were low, at 8 percent and 7 percent respectively.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
