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80% of voters have decided their choice of presidential candidate: Expert
Charta Politika political analyst Yunarto Wijaya has said that around 80 percent of voters have decided who they will vote for in the July 9 presidential election
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hartaPolitika political analyst Yunarto Wijaya has said that around 80 percent of votershave decided who they will vote for in the July 9 presidential election.
According to his research, Yunarto said the situation was different to the Jakarta gubernatorial election in 2011, when only around 60 percent of voters had made their choice five days before election day.
'This means that voters are already fixed in their preferences for a particular candidate. It is unlikely that people will change their minds in the next week and a half,' he said as quoted by Antara news agency on Friday.
Yunarto said the vice-presidential debate, which will take place on Sunday evening, was unlikely to persuade many voters to alter their choice of candidate.
'Voters are fairly polarized [in their preference] for either Jokowi [Joko Widodo] or Prabowo [Subianto], while the vice-presidential candidates are merely complementary to them,' he said.
Yunarto said the results of surveys conducted before and after debates held during previous national and regional elections had not fluctuated significantly, indicating that voters were not easily swayed. He added that one of the factors for this was that voters did not make their choices based on rationale or logic.
However, Yunarto said the debates were still important as a tool to help advance the country's democracy, as the candidate pairs could inform the public about their programs, which may offer additional information to voters to help them in making their choices.
The General Elections Commission (KPU) is organizing Sunday's debate, which will cover the topics of human resources, science and technology and will be broadcast live by RCTI and MNC TV.
The KPU previously announced campaigning would take place from June 14 to July 5, to be followed by a 'cooling-off' period on July 6-8. (gda)
