Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi hopes for big win in national elections

A voter fills in a ballot in the lower house election (Louise Delmotte/AP)

Polls have opened in parliamentary elections that Japan’s popular prime minister Sanae Takaichi hopes will give her struggling party a big enough win to push through an ambitious conservative political agenda.

Ms Takaichi is hugely popular, but the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed Japan for most of the last seven decades, has struggled from funding and religious scandals.