W

ith presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto of the Gerindra Party managing to improve his approval rating over the past few weeks, analysts predict that the July 9 poll will be a tight race that neither candidate will win with a landslide.

'€œBoth candidates'€™ chances of winning are now equal and the race will be very competitive. Jokowi supporters should not be complacent because the tables can turn at any time,'€ political analyst Burhanuddin Muhtadi of the pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Jokowi, who was nominated to run for the country'€™s top job by the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) just two days before the legislative election outdoor campaign season began in March, has been touted as the strongest contender in the race.

The PDI-P set a legislative election target of 27 percent, believing that Jokowi'€™s popularity alone would attract many votes. As predicted, came PDI-P first, although it gained only 18.95 percent of the vote.

Up until recently, various opinion polls placed Prabowo in second position with a significant margin after Jokowi. Recent opinion polls, however, show that Prabowo is narrowing the gap.

An unpublished report based on a survey conducted by the Strategic Development and Policy Research Center (Puskaptis) shows that Jokowi now only has a single-digit lead over Prabowo.

Refrizal, a member of the board of patrons of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), which is a coalition member of the supporting the Prabowo-Hatta Rajasa pairing, said that in the survey Jokowi had only a 3.44 percent lead.

'€œ[In the survey] Jokowi-JK [Jusuf Kalla] got 43.72 percent and Prabowo-Hatta 40.28 percent, while 16 percent of the respondents were undecided,'€ he said.

Other pollsters, however, claim that Jokowi still has a comfortable lead.

Indonesia Survey Circle (LSI) last week released results of a poll showing that the Jokowi-Kalla pairing would gain 35.42 percent of the vote if the election were to take place today, leading by a two-digit margin.

The figure for Prabowo and Hatta was 22.75 percent. A total of 41.8 percent were undecided.

Despite the 13 percent margin, the LSI survey indicates that Prabowo and his running mate have a fighting chance if he can win over a majority of the undecided voters within the next 37 days.

An April survey conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consultant (SMRC), which surveyed 2,040 respondents on which candidate they would vote for if the election only had Jokowi and Prabowo as candidates, showed the former would lead the race with a 16 percent margin.

At the height of his popularity, Jokowi'€™s approval rating stood at 62 percent.

Jokowi shrugged off Puskaptis'€™ latest opinion poll, saying that: '€œIt doesn'€™t matter. Everything can only happen according to God'€™s will. We will see what the people really want [on July 9],'€ he said during a visit to Yogyakarta.