Presidential candidates Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan are locked in a tight competition to be part of a likely runoff election after the three latest opinion polls found the former Central Java governor’s electability had started to slip.

The three public polls were the first to be conducted during the first week of campaigning and ahead of the first election debate, which will be hosted by the General Elections Commission (KPU) on Tuesday.

An Indonesia Survey Institute (LSI) survey found that Ganjar of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and his running mate Mahfud MD had an electability of 23.8 percent in early December, placing the pair second, leaving them a whopping 21.8 percentage points behind frontrunners Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka.

The Ganjar-Mahfud pair, however, is still competitive against Anies Baswedan and Muhaimin Iskandar, who came last with an electability of 22.3 percent. Some 8.3 percent of respondents either were undecided or did not answer.

But unlike Anies and Muhaimin, whose electability has grown by 2.7 percentage points since October, the Ganjar-Mahfud pair’s electability decreased by 2.3 percentage points, while that of Prabowo and Gibran increased by 9.7 percentage points.

An Indikator Politik Indonesia survey, conducted from Nov. 23 to Dec. 1, found that Ganjar and Mahfud came second with an electability of 25.6 percent, some 20.2 percentage points behind frontrunners Prabowo and Gibran, and just 2.8 percentage points ahead of the Anies-Muhaimin pair. Some six percent of respondents were undecided.

Read also: Presidential candidates ready for first debate

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