The approval rating for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Cabinet fell to a record low of 49.1 percent, down 4.3 percentage points from last month, a Kyodo News survey showed Sunday.
The plunge in the support rate comes as Takaichi effectively dismissed her scandal-hit farm minister Kazuo Yana earlier this month amid mounting pressure from opposition parties for his removal.
The disapproval rating for her Cabinet rose to 33.0 percent from 30.9 percent in September's survey.
Over 57 percent of poll respondents said Takaichi's dismissal of the farm minister came too late, with 54.7 percent saying his resignation will affect the future of her government, the nationwide survey showed, after his scandals were first revealed by weekly magazines in late September.
Asked whether Yana's resignation was warranted in light of his past controversial remarks about road budget cuts and his arranging free bus rides for supporters, 81.5 percent answered that it was only natural, while 11.1 percent said it was unnecessary.
According to the magazine reports, Yana had said road budgets were drastically cut for two municipalities in his Tochigi Prefecture constituency whose leaders did not back him in the February general election. He largely acknowledged the reports but denied any illegality, saying he had not pressed the land ministry to reduce the budgets.
As for the free bus rides during campaigns for House of Representatives elections, Yana initially said his camp had confirmed with local electoral authorities that the arrangement was lawful. But he later said that staff might have made inquiries about "how to count" the bus expenses in campaign finance records, implying they might not have asked about their legality.
Takaichi appeared to have decided to let Yana go to avoid further damage to her government and clear the way for parliamentary deliberations on key bills, including one to implement a consumption tax cut on food and beverages.
Regarding the tax cut on food and drink products from 8 percent to 1 percent for two years from April, 56.2 percent of the survey respondents said they support it while 39.8 percent did not.
As the consumption tax cut would lead to revenue loss of about 10 trillion yen ($63 billion) over two years, 65.1 percent said they are concerned about its impact on the country's finances.
Meanwhile, the survey also asked about an increasing number of cyber threats to companies in Japan, which have caused a spate of data breaches in recent weeks. Over 90 percent of respondents said they "felt worried" or "felt worried to some extent" about the growing cyber threats and only 7.8 percent said they were unworried or unworried to some extent.
The telephone survey was conducted over two days from Saturday. It called 490 randomly selected households with eligible voters and 3,067 mobile phone numbers. It yielded responses from 424 household members and 626 mobile phone users.
Some areas in Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan, struck by a powerful earthquake in late July, were excluded.
