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Parties fail to make use of coattail effect: Experts
The PDI-P's and Gerindra Party's gains slightly increased, while mid-sized parties passed the threshold despite gloomy predictions.
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Ready for distribution: An official prepares ballot boxes at the Tanah Abang district branch of the General Elections Commission (KPU) in Jakarta on Thursday. In line with a Constitution Court ruling, the KPU will increase the number of polling stations from 809,500 to 810,327.
(The Jakarta Post/Wendra Ajistyatama )
W
hile much was made of the coattail effect that major political parties would get from nominating a presidential candidate, observers say early vote counts have suggested that parties were not taking full advantage of it.
As 2019 marked Indonesia's first-ever simultaneous presidential and legislative elections, political analysts and pollsters predicted that parties most associated with a particular presidential ticket would gain more votes.
This is because voters would likely cast their presidential ballot first and would thus be inclined to vote for parties that supported their chosen presidential candidate.
But quick counts conducted by several established polling organizations showed that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), of which President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo is a member, and the Gerindra Party, which is chaired by presidential contender Prabowo Subianto, both failed to improve from their performance in the 2014 legislative election, which was held three months before the presidential election.
Quick counts conducted by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Cyrus Network, Kompas, Indikator Politik Indonesia, and Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting (SMRC) put PDI-P's vote share at 19 and 20 percent, not far off from its 2014 showing of 18.95 percent and considerably lower than preelection predictions of 25 to 30 percent.
Gerindra, meanwhile, has garnered around 12 to 13 percent of the vote, close to the 11.81 percent it gained in 2014 and short of the 15 to 17 percent that pollsters had predicted.
Gerindra might even be pipped to second place by the embattled Golkar Party, despite the latter being plagued by leadership struggles and graft cases implicating some of its top executives.
