SMRC survey points to enduring support for Jokowi and PDI-P

• President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is favored to win reelection in 2019, while the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, or PDIP, is expected to sweep the vote in the general elections in the same year, a new survey conducted by the Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting, or SMRC, showed.
• However, a high percentage of swing voters due to low party identification in Indonesia can generate unpredictable results in the upcoming elections.
• The survey, published on 2 Jan 18 was based on interviews conducted on 7 – 13 Dec 17 and randomly sampled 1,220 respondents eligible to vote from all of the country’s 34 provinces.
• More than 53% of respondents said they will choose Jokowi for president when a list of candidates is given, while Prabowo Subianto, founder of the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra), garnered 18.5% of potential votes and former-President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono garnered 2.6%.
• When the question was presented as an open-ended one, 38.9% of respondents indicated support for Jokowi, followed by Prabowo at 10.5% and Susilo at 1.4%.
• The survey indicated high electability for PDIP, which was favored by 27.6% of respondents when given a list of political parties to choose from. The Golongan Karya Party (Golkar) garnered the second-highest level of support according to the survey, followed by Gerindra and the Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat).
• SMRC’s recent survey also showed that 43.1% of respondents did not indicate support for any party when prompted with an open-ended question, and almost 20% did not indicate support when a list of political parties was given. A similar trend was observed in the case of presidential candidates as well.
• “Indonesian voters tend to shift support from one party to the next between elections. this fact also indicates that voters are open and will demand political parties to work harder to secure their vote,” SMRC executive director Djayadi Hanan said.
• The high percentage of swing voters, according to SMRC, is due to the fact that Indonesians generally lack party identification, or loyalty to a specific party.

External Link : http://jakartaglobe.id/news/survey-shows-high-support-jokowi-pdip-swing-voters-impact-elections-outcome/