“Owning a [smartphone] is indicative of their critical nature, as they typically have more access to social and political information over voters who don’t,” SMRC political researcher Deni Irvani said on Tuesday when explaining the pollster criteria over what constitutes a critical voter.

According to Deni, these critical voters, which represent around 80 percent of all national voters, are not as easily influenced and are even capable of influencing other voters. The telephone survey polled 831 respondents of voting age nationwide with a 3.5 percent margin of error and was conducted between April 18 and 19.

Among these voters, the PDI-P remained a frontrunner for the 2024 legislative election at the national level, pocketing 16.1 percent of the votes. Support for the party, however, showed a gradual decline, with the PDI-P garnering 19.5 percent of the votes in the same survey in April 2022.

After winning the most votes in two previous legislative elections, the PDI-P has set a lofty goal of scoring a hat-trick by winning the 2024 legislative election. The party and its newly announced presidential candidate, Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, recently were criticized over their refusal to welcome Israel for the U-20 World Cup, which led to FIFA removing Indonesia as a host nation.

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Meanwhile, support for second and third-placed Gerindra Party and Golkar Party, respectively, have shown an uptick in the same timeframe. Gerindra garnered 11.7 percent of the votes in the survey, up from 9.2 percent a year ago, while Golkar is further behind with 8.7 percent of the votes, up from 5.9 percent in April 2022.