Up until last week, Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto had faced pressures, from within and outside his Gerindra party, to quit the 2024 presidential race because all surveys overwhelmingly showed he could not beat any of the other two likely contenders, Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo and former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan.

If he ignores what these surveys have told him, he risks going down in Indonesia’s political history as a three-time loser, a national, maybe even a world, record. He lost his presidential bids in 2014 and 2019, both times to Joko “Jokowi” Widodo. It will actually be his fourth defeat if we count 2009 when he ran as running mate to Megawati Sukarnoputri and lost that one too.

Others have cited his health and his temperament as reasons for the 71-year former Army general to drop out of the 2024 race. Essentially, surveys tell him to just forget about it and spare himself a big embarrassment. But now the table appears to have been turned and his campaign team is being reinvigorated.

Two factors account for this: Ganjar, who had previously topped all opinion surveys, is paying a heavy price for causing FIFA to cancel Indonesia as host of this May soccer Under-20 World Cup, and the formation of a grand alliance of five political parties, with Prabowo as its presidential candidate.

A new opinion poll released by Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI) on Monday put Prabowo at the top in a simulated three-horse race, gathering 30.3 percent support from the 1,229 people surveyed, ahead of Ganjar with 26.9 percent and Anies with 25.3 percent. Compared with the last survey in March, his gain came almost entirely from Ganjar, who saw his share of the support fall 8-percentage points.

The LSI is one of the leading survey agencies regularly putting out opinion poll results, and most of them are in agreement about where to place Prabowo, Anies and Ganjar, with slight variations in percentages. Most had put Ganjar and Anies as the two top contenders who would move to the second round in the unlikely event of any candidate winning a simple majority in the first round.

In 2019, Prabowo lost to Jokowi but still won 45 percent of the votes. He has since lost many of these supporters who were dismayed at his decision to join Jokowi’s cabinet after losing the 2019 election. Many supporters, particularly Muslim conservatives, are switching their votes to Anies.

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