TOKYO: Japan's political leaders made final pleas for votes Saturday on the eve of landmark elections expected to end half a century of almost unbroken conservative rule and bring to power a centre-left party. Polls predict the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will trounce Prime Minister Taro Aso's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for all but 10 months since its founding in 1955.

The DPJ could win more than 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house, the Yomiuri Shimbun daily has predicted after it questioned more than 85,000 voters, pointing to the "DPJ's overwhelming momentum".

"It takes courage to change history. Let us work together with you, the people, to establish democratic politics in Japan," the front-runner, DPJ president Yukio Hatoyama, said in his final speech at a Tokyo train station.

"Why can't we do what the United States could do," he told a crowd of thousands, referring to the sweeping changes brought by the election of President Barack Obama, before a deadline for public campaign speeches to end.

"With a change of government, we will end bureaucracy-led politics," said Hatoyama, a 62-year-old US-trained engineering scholar and the scion of a political dynasty sometimes dubbed Japan's Kennedys.

On the opposite side of the Ikebukuro railway station, unpopular Prime Minister Taro Aso also pleaded for votes, highlighting his government's economic policies and attacking DPJ pledges as fiscally irresponsible.

"The LDP wants to continue and complete its economic measures, which have proven correct with a rebound in gross domestic product," he said, after data showed last week that Japan's worst post-war recession has ended.

Voter turnout is expected to be high. More than 10 percent or Japan's 10,944,854 eligible voters had cast their ballots early, by Saturday evening, officials said. Media exit polls are expected at 1100 GMT Sunday.

Opinion polls have for months pointed to a DPJ victory as the electorate has grown increasingly frustrated with the LDP's leadership during an economic downturn and despaired at the gaffes and slip-ups of the premier.

"Japanese voters will finally have a chance to deliver their verdict and bring a power change," said Takehiko Yamamoto, professor of politics at Waseda University in Tokyo. "Now that the DPJ's victory appears certain, the focus has shifted to how significant the margin of their victory will be."

The DPJ already controls the upper house with the support of smaller parties, including the Social Democrats. A two-thirds majority in the lower house would give the party carte blanche to push through legislation.

While few observers expect radical change if the DPJ takes power, Hatoyama has signalled that his party would seek to boost social welfare and back away from the current government's more hawkish foreign policy stance, while aiming for "more equal" relations with the US and a greater focus on Asia.

Hatoyama has said his party would not extend an Indian Ocean naval refuelling mission to support US operations in Afghanistan, the top foreign policy focus of US President Obama.

But he has strongly supported Obama's initiative to fight climate change and to seek an eventual end to nuclear weapons, and has made clear that he sees the Japan-US alliance as the keystone of Tokyo's security stance.

Hatoyama, if he becomes premier, plans to attend the UN assembly in New York in September and hopes to quickly hold talks with Obama and other leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao, local media have reported.

On the domestic front, Hatoyama has promised to soften the harder edges of Japanese capitalism, repair a frayed social safety net, reform the government apparatus and tackle fast-greying Japan's demographic problems.

He has promised child benefit payments and free schooling and to scrap highway tolls to put money into families' pockets. And he promises to return power to the people by reining in what he sees as rule by faceless bureaucrats.

Tough problems await the new administration, however, with the nation plagued by record high unemployment, at 5.7 percent in July, and lingering deflation, the Nikkei business daily said in an editorial Saturday.

The LDP, painting itself as the experienced, safe pair of hands, has scoffed at pledges by the DPJ and questioned how Hatoyama will pay for them without raising taxes or driving up Japan's massive government debt.