Japan's Abe expected to announce snap poll amid worries over North Korea crisis

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will dissolve parliament’s lower house on Thursday for a snap election, a party official said, in a move aimed at taking advantage of improved ratings and opposition disarray.

Abe’s junior coalition partner Natuo Yamaguchi, the head of the Komeito party, said he understood that the election will be held on Oct. 22, as Abe prepared to hold a news conference at 6 p.m. (5.00 a.m. ET) on Monday.

Abe, who has held power for five years, was expected to put pledges to spend on education and child care, stay tough on North Korea and revise the constitution at the forefront of his campaign.

Abe, whose ratings have risen to around 50 percent from around 30 percent in July, is gambling his ruling bloc can keep its lower house majority even if they lose the two-thirds “super majority” needed to achieve his long-held goal of revising the post-war pacifist constitution to clarify the military’s role.

A weekend survey by the Nikkei business daily survey showed 44 percent of voters planned to vote for Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) versus 8 percent for the main opposition Democratic Party and another 8 percent for a new party launched by popular Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.

The Nikkei poll was far more positive for Abe’s prospects that a Kyodo news agency survey that showed his LDP garnering 27.7 percent support, with 42.2 percent undecided