A public opinion poll by Indikator Politik Indonesia released on Wednesday finds support for Ahok and his running mate, Djarot Saiful Hidayat, surging to 38.2 percent in January. The two other candidate pairs, Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno and Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni, won support from 23.8 percent and 23.6 percent of likely voters, respectively.

Some 14.5 percent of the 697 survey respondents from Jakarta’s five municipalities, excluding the Thousand Islands regency, were not willing to reveal their voting preference, the poll reveals. The survey has a 3.8 percent margin of error.

The latest poll indicates a 12-percentage point gain in support for Ahok since November, when the National Police named him a suspect of blasphemy following comments he had made on the Quranic verse Al-Maidah 51.

“Seeing the latest results, it appears Ahok could secure his position to enter the second round of the election, though he will not easily win the race in the normal time,” Indikator executive director Burhanuddin Muhtadi told a press briefing Wednesday.

The 2007 Special Region of Jakarta Law stipulates that any gubernatorial candidate has to secure more than 50 percent of the votes to win the election in the first round.

The poll suggests that support for Ahok, who attended the seventh hearing in his blasphemy trial on Tuesday, has risen partly due to a change in public perception regarding his allegedly blasphemous comments, for which the candidate has previously apologized, and his performance in a televised debate organized by the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) on Jan. 13.

The poll finds that 61 percent of respondents feel that Ahok’s apology was “sincere, so it has to be accepted”, while it also reveals that only 47 percent of respondents still believe Ahok defamed Islam with his remarks, compared to 62 percent who thought so in November.

The survey, meanwhile, finds that 47 percent of respondents claim the Ahok-Djarot ticket, which is backed by the Indonesian Democratic Party Of Struggle (PDI-P), had a much better grasp on the issues touched on in the debate, which revolved around the economy and social welfare.

Responding to the survey results, Mardani Ali Sera, a spokesman for the Anies-Sandiaga ticket, said the most important aspect of the poll was that his camp’s candidate team now came second.

Indikator’s November survey had placed the Anies-Sandiaga ticket, which is backed by the Gerindra Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), in third position. However, the percentage of public support for the pair slightly decreased from 24.5 percent to 23.8 percent.

Mardani, a PKS politician, said: “We believe that the party machine, especially in the PKS, could gather support for Anies and Sandiaga. Also, we do not know what will happen in the next two weeks [before the election].”

The poll suggests that only 23.6 percent of respondents now favor the Agus-Sylviana ticket, which was the frontrunner of the race in November.

“Agus seems to have failed to explain his core campaign promises in the [first] debate, causing the public to become more skeptical about his ability to deliver on them,” Burhanuddin said.

Burhanuddin was referring to Agus’ cash assistance plan to inject Rp 1 billion into community units (RW) in Jakarta per year, with 64 percent of poll respondents unsure the scheme would fare well if Agus was elected governor.

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