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Smear campaign impacts Jokowi's approval rating: Survey
A survey commissioned by Indikator Politik Indonesia has shown that smear campaigning has led to a downturn in presidential candidate Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's approval rating
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survey commissioned by Indikator Politik Indonesia has shown that smear campaigning has led to a downturn in presidential candidate Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's approval rating.
Jokowi has been the target recently of a smear campaign accusing him of being a Christian of Chinese descent, as reported by Antara news agency.
The survey found that Jokowi's current approval rating stood at 31.8 percent, down from 32.5 percent in May.
According to Indikator Politik Indonesia's executive director, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, even though Jokowi still had a higher approval rating than rival presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto, the gap between them was narrowing as Prabowo's popularity increased.
As of now, Prabowo's approval rating stands at 19.8 percent, up from 11.4 percent in May.
"Prabowo's electability rating has not so far been affected by allegations against him of past human rights violations. His popularity is actually higher among those who know about the historic human rights issue than among those who don't. Most of the people who know about the issue are members of the middle class," Burhanuddin said in Jakarta on Wednesday.
This latest survey showed that the human rights allegations were not considered overly important among the respondents, he said.
Burhanuddin added that Prabowo's approval rating was higher in urban areas where the average income was above Rp 1 million (US$83.46) per month, whereas Jokowi was more popular in rural areas.
He added that based on the survey results, Jokowi needed to work three times as hard to raise his approval rating before the presidential election on July 9.(fss)
