Prabowo, who lost to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in the last two presidential elections, appears to have made a substantial electoral gain following a series of high-profile meetings with other political elites, including Jokowi, who has reportedly tapped him as one of his potential successors that would protect his legacies.

An Indonesia Survey Institute (LSI) survey released on Sunday has found that Prabowo is now the most popular candidate for the nation’s top job in a three-horse race simulation against Ganjar and former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan.

His electability rate grew by 3.6 percentage point from 26.7 percent in February to 30.3 percent in March, while Ganjar’s nosedived from 35 to 26.9 percent. Anies now trails Ganjar, with his popularity slightly rising from 24 to 25.3 percent.

While Ganjar was still the man to beat should the presidential election be contested now among 19 popular candidates, Prabowo and Anies had both managed to cut Ganjar’s lead down to just 0.5 and 1.4 percentage points respectively – both within the survey’s 2.5 percentage point margin of error.

LSI executive director Djayadi Hanan said during the survey’s launch on Sunday that the results indicated that Prabowo had begun to take over some of Ganjar’s own loyalists. “Put it simply, [those who supported Ganjar] have now been split, some are undecided, others are now supporting Prabowo while a small minority has gone on to support Anies. This shows that [Ganjar’s supporters] had begun to shift to Prabowo, although not entirely,” Djayadi said.

This can also be seen in Prabowo’s rising popularity in East Java, where Ganjar had previously been the most popular presidential candidate, Djayadi said.