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Analysis: The likelihood of a single-round 2024 presidential race
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An officer from the General Elections Commission (KPU) introduces five different ballots at the KPU building in Central Jakarta in 2018. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
The campaign teams of the presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs are confident they can win the Feb. 14, 2024 race in only one round. However, although one of the tickets, namely Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka, slowly approaches the 50 percent mark in opinion surveys, experts maintain that the presidential election will most likely carry on to a runoff.
According to Gerindra Party secretary-general Ahmad Muzani, the Prabowo-Gibran pair are poised to win the presidential election in just one round of voting. Democratic Party chairman Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono (AHY) is also optimistic that the ticket can beat the threshold of 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round, referencing the favorable results of several opinion polls.
A survey by Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI) this week showed the Prabowo-Gibran pair have an electability rating of 40.3 percent, followed by the Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD pair with 28.6 percent and the Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin "Cak Imin" Iskandar pair with 20.3 percent. Prabowo-Gibran also tops a poll by Indonesia Political Opinion (IPO) with 36.2 percent, with Anies-Cak Imin trailing closely at 34.1 percent and Ganjar-Mahfud placing last at 27.1 percent.
A Populi Center survey, released earlier this month, also found the Prabowo-Gibran pair moved clear with a rating of 43.1 percent, while Ganjar-Mahfud and Anies-Cak Imin remained at 23 percent and 22.3 percent respectively.
The campaign team behind Ganjar-Mahfud, however, has denied reports that the pair's electability rating is on the decline. Deputy head of the team, acting United Development Party (PPP) chairman Muhammad Mardiono, went so far as to claim that an internal survey reflected a positive trend and that the team was confident Ganjar-Mahfud could win the election in only one round.
The law mandates a majority voting system for the presidential race, which means that a presidential and vice-presidential pair must garner at least 50 percent of the vote across the country and at least 20 percent of the vote in each province to win the race. If no candidate reaches this threshold, another round of voting is held between the top-two contenders.
The runoff, if any, will be held in July 2024. The government has allocated a budget for a two-round presidential election.
