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Who to choose? First-time voters prep for 2024 election
And with the 2024 election nearing, are they finally ready to make their voices heard?
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A girl uses her mobile phone in front of an Indonesian election campaign mural ahead of the polls at Banda Aceh, Aceh province, on March 17, 2019. Just like the 2019 election, the young population will again become the majority of voters in the 2024 presidential race. (AFP/Chaideer Mahyuddin)
Many first-time Indonesian voters have started to think about who to vote for in the 2024 presidential election.
Ahead of the 2024 election, a generation of Indonesians who have reached the required age will be on the front lines with their ballots, exercising their right to vote for the very first time. In fact, a Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) survey released in September last year estimated that Gen-Zers and millennials, those ranging from age 17 to 39, will make up nearly 60 percent of voters in 2024.
These young voters include a sizable pool of first-time voters, who will range between age 17 and 21 in 2024. Many of them were in junior and senior high schools when the 2019 election kicked off, watching from the sidelines during the heat of that contest.
And with the 2024 election nearing, are they finally ready to make their voices heard?
“I don’t know much about electoral politics since I haven’t been following a lot for next year,” Azzahra “Ara” Farhani Rachmadewi, 17, told The Jakarta Post on May 23.
However, the student of SMA 9 state senior high school in Bandung, West Java, has not necessarily tuned out the news. She is still waiting for the candidates’ campaigns to begin.
“I want to get to know first their steps and actions to gain my and other people’s interest,” she said.
