"We are receiving severe judgement," Ishiba told national broadcaster NHK late Sunday. Voters "expressed their strong desire for the LDP to do some reflection and become a party that will act in line with the people's will."
"If we are unable to obtain a majority as a result of severe public judgement, we will ask as many people as possible to cooperate with us," the LDP's election chief Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters.
Former defence minister Ishiba, 67, called the election after being narrowly selected last month to lead the LDP, which has governed Japan for almost all of the past 70 years.
But voters in the world's fourth-largest economy have been rankled by rising prices and the fallout from a party slush fund scandal that helped sink previous premier Fumio Kishida.
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