In a first, the pollsters, who have almost accurately predicted all election results in the past, held a joint event in Jakarta.
ight reputable pollsters grouped under the Indonesian Association for Public Opinion Surveys (Persepi) have defended their “quick count” methodology amid allegations they were biased toward President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.
In a first, the pollsters, who have almost accurately predicted all election results in the past, held a joint event in Jakarta on Saturday where they invited the media and the public to examine their methodology as well as raw data from polling stations they surveyed on election day.
The press briefing came only a day after presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto lashed out at the pollsters, calling them liars and asking them “to move to the Antarctic to spread lies to the penguins.”
Quick-count results conducted by the pollsters have shown that the Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin pair is likely to win the presidential race with 54 to 55 percent of the vote against Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno’s 45 to 46 percent.
Prabowo has strongly rejected the results, saying that based on the vote count conducted by his own team, he had won by 62 percent. He claimed to have conducted a real count of data from more than 320,000 polling stations.
Persepi head and Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) executive director Philips J. Vermonte said the press briefing was held in response to attempts by certain groups to delegitimize the scientific method used in counting votes.
“We invite the public to a scientific debate that is evidence-based. Through the data expose, you can see how we did the quick counts. We’ll arrange it like a bazaar for you to see our data closely. There are photos of C1 forms. We went through the process transparently,” he told reporters.
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