A new survey by polling group Indo Barometer questioning people’s presidential candidate preferences ahead of the 2019 election continue to show that President Joko Widodo continues to hold a strong lead over his strongest potential rival, Prabowo Subianto, whom he defeated in the 2014 election.
What is perhaps more surprising from the survey is the notion that former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama still has a small but significant amount of support from people who would like to see him become president, despite the fact that he is currently incarcerated after being found guilty at the conclusion of his sensationalized blasphemy trial. In fact, the survey puts him just a few tenths of a percentage point behind Anies Baswedan, who ultimately defeated him in this year’s Jakarta gubernatorial race.
The Indo Barometer survey was conducted Nov. 15-24, with 1,200 respondents chosen from a multi-stage random sampling of citizens from all 34 Indonesian provinces. The results of the survey were released on Sunday.
The survey’s lead result was from an open question asking respondents name anybody who they would pick to be the president of Indonesia. With the opportunity to pick anybody, 34.9% would choose President Joko Widodo to continue to lead the country.
Prabowo, the former military general and head of the Gerindra party, was picked by 12.1% of respondents.
Those results show a slight increase in support for Jokowi compared to a poll conducted in September by National Survey Media Institute (Median) in which 36.2% of respondents said they would vote for Jokowi while 23.2% said they would pick Prabowo.
No other potential candidate from the survey comes close to Jokowi or Prabowo, but Anies Baswedan is the closest at 3.6%, with his former election rival Ahok close behind with 3.3%.
Rounding out the rest of the results are Gatot Nurmantyo, the outspoken commander of the Indonesian military who Jokowi just recently indicated he would like to replace, with 3.2%; Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil with 2.8%; Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, the son of former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who finished 3rd in the Jakarta gubernatorial election, with 2.5%; former president Megawati Soekarnoputri with 2.0% and Indonesian National Police Chief Tito Karnavian with 1.8%.
In a second question asking respondents to choose from a list of 16 national political figures (and which did not include Ahok), Jokowi’s electability increased to 41.8% while Prabowo’s dropped to 13.6%:
