TOKYO The growing personality cult surrounding Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is persuading more Japanese to vote for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in an upcoming election, showed a poll on Friday. But the public is caught in a bind -- worried that a vote for his long-ruling conservative party would boost the standing of party old guard opposed to the upstart maverick and could actually hamper Koizumi's reform agenda. That was the view reflected in a poll by the ***Yomiuri Shimbun*** newspaper that showed 41 percent of respondents plan to vote for the LDP in a July 29 election for Parliament's upper house. That was up eight percentage points from a survey in May, and compared with a mere 18 percent rate when the party was led by Koizumi's wildly unpopular predecessor, Yoshiro Mori. The election is the first nationwide test of how far Koizumi's sky-high popularity will translate into support for his party and its ruling coalition partners at the polls. Koizumi, who swept to power in April pledging bold reforms to the stagnant economic and stodgy political world, needs the party to do well in the upper house poll to survive a party presidential election in September. But there is a possibility that too strong a showing would actually strengthen the hand of old guard, anti-reform rivals to Koizumi in the LDP, which has held power almost uninterrupted since World War II but whose popularity has been declining sharply in recent years. Many voters want to distinguish between the reformist Koizumi and his party, the Yomiuri poll showed. Asked to characterize their view of the prime minister and his party, nearly 48 percent said they supported both. But almost 41 percent said that while they backed Koizumi, they did not like the LDP, Reuter reported. Just under 35 percent said they wanted to see the current LDP-led three-party ruling coalition stay in power, but almost as many -- 34 percent -- said they did not. Weekly magazines have begun offering advice to voters, telling them to examine closely the factions to which candidates belong in the multi-group LDP and suggesting other ways that they can vote to support Koizumi without bolstering the LDP old guard.