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Jokowi leading against Prabowo: Survey
A nationwide opinion poll has found that the Joko âJokowiâ Widodo-Jusuf Kalla ticket will likely win against the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa pair in the upcoming presidential election
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A nationwide opinion poll has found that the Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo-Jusuf Kalla ticket will likely win against the Prabowo Subianto-Hatta Rajasa pair in the upcoming presidential election. According to the survey, Prabowo could only change the situation if he secured the votes of all undecided voters.
Jakarta-based Indo Barometer found that if the election had taken place between May 28 and June 4, or before the official campaign period, Jokowi-Kalla would have won 49.9 percent of the vote, with a 13.4 percent advantage over Prabowo-Hatta's 36.5 percent.
The survey also found that Jokowi-Kalla would be able to claim victory even if the number of undecided voters abstained.
'Undecided voters account for 13.5 percent of the total electorate. The Prabowo-Hatta camp would have to work extra hard during the campaign period to get all of those swinging votes if they wanted to win,' Indo Barometer executive director Muhammad Qodari said at a press conference in Jakarta on Tuesday.
Qodari added that the survey was conducted prior to the official campaign period and before the first two presidential candidate debates were televised nationwide, which may have influenced voters' preferences.
According to him, the debates are a good opportunity for the candidates to provide more detailed information to voters about their programs.
'The debates are quite influential but at the moment it seems to me that the number of people who have been tuning in has not been especially high, especially those from the middle class,' he said
The survey found that 38 percent of respondents believed that one of the candidate pairs had clear objectives to pursue, while 37 percent had trouble in differentiating between the programs from each camp. An additional 24 percent did not know about the programs or abstained from answering.
The pollster, which interviewed 1,200 respondents from all of the country's 33 provinces for the survey, is currently conducting another survey to see how effective the debates are in reaching a wide audience and who is considered better in the debates.
'Regionally, the most important homework for Prabowo-Hatta is in Java. Outside of Java their deficit is only 2 percent against Jokowi-Kalla, but the gap is 22 percent within Java,' said the researcher.
Meanwhile, one aspect of Jokowi's character that has been called into question is his religious affiliation to Islam. The recent smear campaigns spearheaded by media such as the Obor Rakyat tabloid seem to have deliberately targeted the Islamic community, which accounts for 90.4 percent of Indonesia's total 185 million eligible voters.
Surprisingly, up until the beginning of the presidential campaign season on June 4, the majority of Muslim votes swayed in the direction of Jokowi's camp, even though the majority of Islamic-based parties are part of the opposing Gerindra Party-led coalition.
The survey found that Jokowi-Kalla would receive the support of 54.1 percent of members of the country's largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), compared to Prabowo-Hatta's 38.1 percent.
As for the second-largest Muslim organization, Muhammadiyah, 47.3 percent of members would vote for Jokowi-Kalla, against Prabowo-Hatta's 41.8 percent, according to the results.
'However, of around 50.2 percent of Muslim voters who claim to be not affiliated with either [organization], 49.2 percent said they would vote for Jokowi-Kalla, against 35.6 percent for Prabowo-Hatta,' Qodari said. (tjs)
