Abstract
Probably the first opinion poll in Japan was the survey on the election of prefecture governors by Mainichi Newspaper in 1945. Since then, opinion polling in Japan has been done both by the central government and by mass communication companies. Recently, more and more local governments have conducted opinion polls. Generally these surveys are conducted with a well-planned sampling design and with intertemporal and often international comparison in mind. Currently, opinion polling in Japan faces the following problems: 1) reliable data are harder to obtain, 2) telephone surveys are often used, but there is little study to improve the reliability of this data, 3) the data are not well preserved.
