Japan goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new government, with chaos in the opposition ranks meaning incumbent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is almost certain to be returned despite his approval rating plummeting to just 26% earlier this year. An election victory for Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party would make the 63-year-old Japan’s longest-serving post-World War II leader, and inject new impetus into his plans to overhaul Japan’s pacifist constitution and take a continued hard line with North Korea. Why now? Abe called the election a year early because the opposition is in disarray. The liberal Democratic Party has effectively been dissolved and Abe’s most feared political rival, Tokyo’s popular Governor Koike Yuriko, hasn’t had the opportunity to mount a proper challenge with her new Party of Hope, which she launched just as Abe dissolved the national legislature, or Diet.