As President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s time in office is limited to two five-year terms, the field is wide open for political party leaders, ministers, governors and other personalities to try to get their names on the ballot.

While several leading figures seem to have a lead in the polls, none has yet made a breakthrough to be the most viable candidate. Prabowo Subianto, a two-time contender for the job, is among those in front, but his numbers are far from his own in previous runs.

In the tale of three governors – Anies Baswedan of Jakarta, Ganjar Pranowo of Central Java and Ridwan Kamil of West Java – none has a big enough lead to convince political party leaders to give any of these younger figures a ticket.

For these hopefuls, a look to past races could assist them in navigating the upcoming competition. From four previous elections, we can derive several key features and experiences from successful campaigns to devise a political algorithm for the upcoming election season.

Political parties, too, need to use this algorithm to weigh any candidate – internal or external – who they are considering lending support to. If they fail to do so, they will lose the chance to be on the winning side.

This political algorithm focuses on character, content and constituency.

The first criterion is character. This refers to the person – with all their quirks and uniqueness – seeking the political office and how he or she is perceived by voters, even before they weigh the person’s message or rationale for running. Surveys always look at popularity to measure people’s knowledge of a person and, more importantly, measure electability. Successful candidates have always inspired the public to make strong efforts to support them.

 

The candidate must have a persona that people feel is close to them. They must be someone voters can envision living and milling around their neighborhood. Closeness is also evoked when a candidate serves as an avatar that embodies the identity or aspirations of the people.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) won the presidency in 2004 by bringing the sense of steadiness and competence after a five-year political, economic and security upheaval in the early reform era. He was expected to bring stability and safety for people to begin rebuilding their lives. As a person, he could be distant, but people pinned their hopes on his portrayed leadership capability.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is known for his blusukan (impromptu visits to public places) and his hands-on style in managing governance and social issues. His physical appearance and demeanor also facilitate these visits and conversations with everyday people. These played well in 2014, when people felt the need for a more approachable person as a leader.

Moreover, once these two leaders established themselves as worthy of popular affection, they managed to create personas that could rise above political party identity and place themselves as a coalition builders of different political persuasions. This is critical in transforming popular affinity into national leadership.

The second criterion is content, where candidates convey aspirations and ideas to confront contemporary problems and future challenges. These could be “kitchen table” issues, such as health, education, livelihood and personal safety but may also expand into more identity-related aspirations and emotions.

It is essential that the narrative being built encompasses those features and embodies the candidate delivering them. Both elements must strengthen each other into a coherent story, and it has to be perceived as genuine to catch meaningful traction in the voter’s mind. Strong traction is critical in ensuring durability and preventing the erosion of electability from counter-narratives. This is the essence of electability – not only to reside in the public consciousness but also to trigger real action.

SBY, a military man, mainly spoke of building a resilient economy and elevating people’s welfare. On the topic of security, Indonesia was then facing armed separatist movement in Aceh, communal strife in eastern Indonesia and major terror attacks. For those, he put forth diplomacy and law enforcement messages rather than military actions. This content and his character were sufficient for him to gain traction among a third of the voters in the first round and propelled him to 60 percent in the final stretch of the 2004 elections.

Jokowi, a furniture entrepreneur turned city administrator, promoted an infrastructure-driven economy, social welfare initiatives and adherence to democracy. Not a party elite, he emphasized his everyday societal interactions, strengthening the persona of a common man who stands morally above partisan identities. This is a narrative in contrast to the identity-fueled and elite-tinged campaign from his opponent in 2014 and 2019.

Constituency is the third element in this algorithm. Character and content must be embraced by a targeted constituency. A candidate cannot campaign with similar efforts in all regions of the country, not only due to availability of resources but mostly because of the great diversity in Indonesia’s communities. Hence, winning a majority coalition of those localities by weaving a tapestry of sociocultural identities and personal hopes is crucial.

A broader coalition was SBY’s strategy into the presidency. Voters across Java and the southern half of Sumatera, as well as other parts in the archipelago, led him to his first victory. He was then able to triumph in Java, Sumatra and eastern Indonesia to secure a landslide in 2004.

Jokowi took a different route. In both 2014 and 2019, he focused on Indonesia’s core (The Jakarta Post, July 15, 2019), the Javanese heartland that stretches along the corridor of Banyumas to Banyuwangi. He also secured other Javanese support in Sumatra and Kalimantan and won substantial votes in eastern Indonesia. In western Java, Jokowi egged a lead in Jakarta, while maintaining 40 percent support in West Java and Banten. Everywhere here was fertile ground to plant his narrative based on character and content.

A note regarding constituency is the importance of the relawan (volunteer) network supporting Jokowi’s election efforts, where groups of supporters organized networks in certain constituencies. These were often separate and outside of the political party machinery. The groups would act as a proxy to spread a candidate’s message in a way the candidate himself could not, bound by time, location, rules and sometimes political ethics in order to garner votes. Having groups of relawan is now an accepted practice for every level of electoral competition since the 2014 presidential election and has gained more traction since. One can expect to see more of these groups declaring support for candidates in 2024.

The 2024 presidential race is an open field, and aspiring candidates could well learn from the previous four election cycles and how the winning candidates managed their campaigns. From those insights a political algorithm can construct a profile of a candidate with calibrated mix of character, content and constituency that could chart a path to the presidency.

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Adi Abidin is a research fellow at Populi Center and a senior analyst at Indovibrant Strategic Advisory, where Charine Pakpahan is a consultant. The views expressed are their own.