When the ruling PDI-P party announced that it would be supporting Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama in his reelection bid in the 2017 elections, some political analysts declared the race essentially over before it began. Many believed that Ahok, with his already high electability ratings in the polls, would be almost impossible to defeat with the backing of PDI-P and the lack of a popular and tested figure such as Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini (who was also considered by PDI-P) to challenge him.
However, that was before the final days before the registration deadline for the elections, when support political party support coalesced around two figures who were rarely discussed previously – former education minister Anies Baswedan and the son of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Agus Yudhoyono.
As they were both rather surprising choices for the election, very few of the previous surveys of possible gubernatorial candidates had analyzed their electability. But now we have our first poll from a major Indonesian polling group, Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) putting the three gubernatorial candidates head-to-head, and according to LSI’s analysis, the results are not good for Ahok.
LSI chief Denny JA said that Ahok had been steadily dropping in electability over the last several surveys they had taken, and that their latest poll shows his victory in next year’s election is far from assured.
“Now, the decline in support puts Ahok in a vulnerable position. He might win. However, he may also lose. It is even possible that Ahok might be eliminated in the first round of elections in February 2017, “Denny JA wrote in a statement today as quoted by Tempo.
According to LSI’s latest poll, done in the first days of this month, Ahok electability rating is at 31.1 percent. By comparison, Agus Yudhoyono got 22.30 percent and Anies Baswedan got 20.20 percent. However, Denny noted that Anies and Agus combined would get about 42.5 percent, beating Ahok by 11.4 percent, which he said shows how precarious his position is.
Danny said, the survey was conducted from September 28 until October 2, with a total of 440 respondents using face-to-face interviews with multi-stage random sampling.
LSI has been heavily hyping the results of this latest survey, leaking their analysis that Ahok could lose the election to media outlets even before the results of their poll were released this afternoon. The survey group has in the past been criticized with accusations of political bias and using leading questions in their surveys.
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