The worst prime minister for Japanese government bonds in almost two decades is poised to return, ousting the best since 2006.

Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to replace Yoshihiko Noda in Sunday's general election, oversaw a 1.2 percent gain when he was in office for a year through September 2007, the least since a loss in the two months that Tsutomu Hata was in power in 1994. In the 15 months under Noda's watch, JGBs returned 3.2 percent, the most among the six successors to Junichiro Koizumi, who stepped down in 2006, data compiled by the European Federation of Financial Analyst Societies and Bloomberg show.

Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party are ahead in the polls after he pledged to increase spending and encourage unlimited monetary easing to revive growth in the third-largest economy. Noda staked his career on raising the sales tax to rein in the world's biggest debt, helping drive bond yields to a nine-year low. Costs to protect JGBs fell by the most of any other leader since data became available in 2004 and are lower than eight nations in Europe.