A closer look at the data suggests the Prabowo-Gibran Rakabuming Raka ticket managed to do better than both rival camps in all areas sampled, including upset victories in the Bali and Nusa Tenggara provinces, as well as the Central Java and Yogyakarta electoral region. - Reuters
JAKARTA: Presumptive presidential election winner Prabowo Subianto has key wins in several battleground provinces to thank for clearing his path to the nation’s highest office, as indicated by various quick counts predicting the outcome of the 2024 general election.
With several pollsters tabulating the last percentile of results from sample polling stations, Prabowo retained a comfortable lead ahead of rivals Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, clocking 58.25 per cent of the vote in a quick count by the Cyrus Network and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Former Jakarta governor Anies was the runner-up with 24.91 per cent of the vote, while former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo placed a distant third with 16.84 per cent, according to a CSIS press statement on Sunday (Feb 18).
The CSIS-Cyrus Network quick count sampled 2,000 polling stations across the country, with a margin of error of 1 per cent.
A closer look at the data suggests the Prabowo-Gibran Rakabuming Raka ticket managed to do better than both rival camps in all areas sampled, including upset victories in the Bali and Nusa Tenggara provinces, as well as the Central Java and Yogyakarta electoral region – previously considered to be stronghold provinces for the Ganjar-Mahfud MD ticket and their main sponsor, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).
Prabowo won 60.75 per cent of the vote in the Bali and Nusa Tenggara electoral region, compared to Ganjar’s 27.12 per cent.
In Central Java and Yogyakarta, Prabowo won 52.02 per cent of the vote to Ganjar’s 34.65 per cent.
Anies put up a good showing in his own stronghold provinces of Jakarta and Banten, where he won 37.82 per cent of the vote, but he and running mate Muhaimin Iskandar were ultimately surpassed by Prabowo and Gibran’s 48.74 per cent.
With former West Java governor Ridwan Kamil and former East Java governor Khofifah Indar Parawinsa on his campaign team, Prabowo recorded significant victories in the country’s two most populous provinces, winning 58.37 per cent of the vote in West Java and 65.11 per cent in East Java, according to the CSIS quick count.
CSIS political department head Arya Fernandes said on Sunday that his ranks were confident that their quick count would closely emulate the General Elections Commission’s (KPU) official vote tally, despite recent allegations of election fraud, particularly from the Anies and Ganjar camps.
“With the quick count, we designed the procedure very strictly by paying close attention to scientific and academic principles,” Arya said, adding that the CSIS’ quick count during the 2019 presidential election was closer to the official vote tally than those of other pollsters.
Three other quick counts by usually reliable pollsters Indikator Politik Indonesia, Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) and the research arm of the Kompas daily also flagged similar trends, projecting the Prabowo-Gibran pair to have won around 58 per cent of the national vote.
The Anies-Muhaimin pair also came second in all three quick counts with 24-25 per cent of the vote, while the Ganjar-Mahfud pair placed last with around 16 per cent.
The quick count surveys, while only showing samples of the election returns that are to be manually counted and officially announced by March 20, have been known to be accurate to within a few percentage points.
While the Gerindra Party chairman may have clinched a sound victory for himself in the presidential race, the PDI-P still claimed a big win in the legislative election, securing the most support of the 17 political parties on the ballot, according to the CSIS-Cyrus Network quick count. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
