Heavyweight members of Japan's long-ruling Liberal Democratic party campaigned furiously to save their once-safe seats yesterday as an opinion poll suggested the party was heading for a dramatic defeat in Sunday's general election.

The LDP has run Japan for all but 11 months of the past 53 years. But in a striking sign of the trouble it finds itself in, a poll by one of Japan's leading newspapers predicted that the opposition Democratic party could end up controlling two-thirds of the seats in the Diet's lower house. Such a result would allow the centre-left party to rule without relying on coalition partners.

In the latest of a series of downbeat comments by senior LDP figures, Taro Aso, prime minister and party leader, said the DPJ's poll leadreflected “an accumulation of criticism” toward the ruling coalition.