With a little over a week to go until the runoff election between the incumbents, Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama and Vice Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, and their rivals, Anies Baswedan and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, the latest survey, from the National Institute for Media Survey (Median), shows a slight tightening from previous polls but Anies-Sandiaga remain in the lead, with 49.8% percent of potential voters saying they would pick the challengers versus 43.5% for the incumbents.
There’s another factor that remains similar to previous polls – despite results showing that respondents were generally satisfied with Ahok-Djarot’s work so far, and that they believed the incumbents are more likely to solve Jakarta’s problems, and that they were more experienced, more still chose Anies-Sandiaga due to what Median classified as “emotional reasons”.
In fact, Median titled the results of their survey, which were released yesterday, “Paradox of Voter Behavior in the Jakarta Gubernatorial Election 2017: Strong Competition between Rational Voters and Emotional Voters”.
When asked who was more likely to be able to solve Jakarta’s problems, 44.9% of respondents picked Ahok-Djarot versus 40.9% for Anies-Sandi.
Asked who had the best policy proposals, 46.1% of respondents went with Ahok-Djarot versus 39.3% for Anies-Sandi.
As for who was more experienced, 65.9% of respondents choose Ahok-Djarot versus only 23.2% for Anies-Sandi.
And in terms of Ahok’s performance as governor, 65.6% of voters, or nearly 2 out of 3, said they were satisfied.
But clearly, to some Jakarta voters, none of that matters.
When Median asked respondents why they were voting for their chosen pairs, 67.1% of those who picked Ahok-Djarot cited reasons defined as “rational” by the survey group (such as experience and effectiveness) while 18.2% choose them for reasons defined as “emotional” (such as their attitudes, their identities and, of course, their religions).
When it came to those who said they were voting for Anies-Sandi, 31.1% of respondents cited rational reasons and a whopping 60.4% cited emotional reasons.
This result is unfortunately in line with previous polls which also showed voters choosing to vote against Ahok, despite high satisfaction levels in his work.
The survey was conducted by Median from April 1-6 with 1,200 Jakarta voters chosen multistage random sampling technique. Median says the survey has a margin of error of 2.9% and a confidence level of 95%.
There’s supposedly another new poll, conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting, that shows Ahok-Djarot and Anies-Sandi running neck and neck, 46.9% to 47.9%, respectively. This slide was shared by Ericssen, a political analyst, on his Twitter account, although he says the results won’t officially be released until tomorrow.
#Breaking Governor @basuki_btp and Secretary @aniesbaswedan are running neck and neck one week before the Jakarta Election, SMRC Poll shows pic.twitter.com/w0wkKWV2ow
— Ericssen (@EricssenWen) April 10, 2017
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