Suga's LDP on course to regain ground in Tokyo local election - exit polls - Reuters

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TOKYO, July 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is likely to regain ground in local elections in Tokyo, exit polls showed on Sunday, as the capital prepares to host the Olympic Games whilst dealing with a resurgence of COVID-19.

The outcome of the election of the local assembly will be a bellwether for a national lower house election that needs to be held by October. A strong showing by the LDP could also help Suga clinch another term as the party's leader.

LDP is expected to win 25 to 43 seats of the assembly's 127 seats, after winning just 25 seats in the last election in 2017, public broadcaster NHK said.

Still, it was not certain if the LDP and its junior coalition party Komeito, can gain a majority, it added.

Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike's regional party, now the largest group in the metropolitan assembly, is expected to suffer a setback, winning 20 to 35 seats, compared with 45 it holds now.

Suga's term as LDP president expires at the end of September. The head of the LDP is virtually assured of being prime minister, given the party's large majority in parliament.

Turnout by 7:30 p.m. (1030 GMT) was estimated at 28.41%, 7.5 percent lower than at the same time in the last such election, NHK reported.

The election comes during a resurgence of the pandemic in Japan, with Tokyo reporting 716 new COVID-19 infections on Saturday, its highest in more than five weeks. read more

Suga has said he intends to proceed with the Games, postponed from last year due to the virus, but would not hesitate to bar spectators if it was deemed necessary.

Koike's Tokyo Citizens First party wants the Olympics held without spectators and the Japanese Communist Party wants them cancelled.

The Tokyo Olympics begin on July 23.

"My focus on this election was the pandemic measures," a 26-year-old freelance actor, who is deaf, wrote in a note to a reporter outside the polling station. He asked not to be named.

"I picked the candidate who would take actions to save infected people, as I am afraid of losing my job and my income if I get infected," he said, declining to name the candidate. "I don't care about political parties."

Another voter was critical of the LDP's handling of the pandemic.

"I wanted to give my vote to someone in the opposition as I don't support the current (national) government," said Noriko Ushimaru, a woman in her 80s. "They are hopeless in coronavirus responses. I don't see their determination to curb the virus."

She said the holding the Tokyo Olympics amid the pandemic and vaccine supply shortages were examples of the government's inadequate anti-coronavirus measures.

Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Additional reporting by Yuka Obayashi and Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, William Mallard and Elaine Hardcastle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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