For Voters, Political Parties Have No Influence On The Choice Of Presidential Candidates

JAKARTA - Executive Director of Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), Sirojudin Abbas said that political parties have no influence on the choice of presidential candidates (candidates) at the electorate level.

This is one of the findings of the latest SMRC survey entitled "Prospects of Political Parties and Presidential Candidates: Trends in Political Behavior of National Voters" which was released in Jakarta, Tuesday, December 28.

Abbas explained, to find out the effect or influence of political parties on the choice of presidential candidates, SMRC conducted a survey using an experimental method. The experimental survey method is one way to examine the causal relationship between the independent and dependent variables in a public opinion survey.

"Because it was determined through an experimental design by giving random treatment to respondents and then seeing its effect on the consequences," said Abbas.

In this experimental method, continued Abbas, the respondents were divided into three groups. Namely control, first treatment and second treatment.

"In the control group, they were asked if the political party that you or your father chose nominate someone to become president, would you or your father choose the presidential candidate? As a result, there were 53 percent who would vote for that candidate, while 23 percent would not vote for that candidate," Abbas explained.

The first treatment group was asked if the chosen party did not nominate the presidential candidate favored by the party's voters, whether the voter would still choose the presidential candidate of that party's choice. As a result, as many as 29 percent of those who will continue to choose the presidential candidate they do not like, while 53 percent of those who answer will not vote for the candidate.

"While the second treatment group was asked if there was a presidential candidate who was preferred but not nominated by the party he chose, would he choose that presidential candidate? To this question, as many as 55 percent would still vote for the presidential candidate and 27 percent would not vote for that candidate, ' said Abbas.

Based on this finding, explained Abbas, in the eyes of party voters, the personal quality of the presidential candidate is more important than the party's decision about the presidential candidate. He said that the support of party voters for the presidential candidate nominated by the party decreased significantly if the presidential candidate was not liked by the voters.

"In general, party voters consider the personal qualities of the presidential candidates more than the decisions made by the party," said Abbas.

Abbas added that the importance of parties compared to the quality of presidential candidates presupposes that the bond between voters and parties is psychologically strong (party identification). In Indonesia, said Abbas, this precondition is not met.

"Party ID is very weak, the trend shows no more than 15 percent," he concluded.

This SMRC survey was conducted on 8-16 December 2021 through face-to-face or face-to-face interviews. The number of initial samples is 2420 randomly selected (multistage random sampling) from the entire Indonesian population who are at least 17 years old or married.

With a total of 2,062 or 85 percent of respondents who can be interviewed validly. The margin of error for the survey with this sample size is estimated at ± 2.2 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.