With the Jakarta governor’s election less than one month away on February 15, the three candidate pairs are fiercely campaigning for votes. Several earlier polls indicated that the pair of Agus Yudhoyono Harimurti and Sylviana Murni were in the lead, with incumbent pair Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and Djarot Saiful Hidayat generally in second place (which most analysts attributed to the political fallout from Ahok’s ongoing blasphemy trial) while Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno usually languishing in 3rd.
However, the first poll to be conducted entirely after the first official gubernatorial debate was held on January 13 shows a very different dynamic to the race. According to this latest survey, Ahok-Djarot are in first place 36.7% while Anies-Sandiaga are in second with 28.5% and Agus-Sylviana are in third with 25% of respondents’ votes.
The poll was conducted by the Populi Center survey group and is based on interviews done from January 14 to 19. About 9.8% of those who took the survey said they were still undecided, which is actually an increase from 8.5% who choose undecided when Populi Center conducted the same survey in December.
“The increase in the number of undecided voters post-debate can be considered a positive signal in that it shows voters are become more rational and tending to wait and see the performance of all the candidates in the upcoming second and third debates,” said Populi Center researcher Nona Evita, as quoted by Kompas.
The Populi Center said their survey data was based on 600 face-to-face interviews conducted with respondents in six areas of Jakarta using multistage random sampling and has a margin of error of approximately 4%.
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