Popularity Of Vice Presidential Candidates On Social Media And Online Mass Media Ahead Of The 20204 Presidential Election

Three presidential candidates Anies Baswedan, Prabowo Subianto, and Ganjar Pranowo in the fifth debate of the 2024 presidential election at JCC, Sunday (4/2/2024). (VOI/Bambang E Ros)

JAKARTA Ahead of voting day on February 14, 2024, the popularity of three presidential candidates has attracted public attention. The three presidential candidates that will fight are Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar, Prabowo Subianto-Gibran Rakabuming Raka, and Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD. Each presidential candidate is increasingly campaigning to increase popularity.

According to the Big Indonesian Dictionary (KBBI), popularity is defined as popularity or the level of popularity. Meanwhile, the Brontnica Dictionary explains that popularity is a preferred, accepted, or recognized by many people.

Netray monitors the popularity of the three pairs of Vice Presidential Candidates using the words "keyganjar&Mahfud,prabowo&gibran," andanies&muhaimin. Meanwhile, the popularity of the Vice Presidential Candidates individually is monitored by the words "keyganjar pranowo," mahfud md, prabowo subianto, gibran, anies baswedan, and muhaimin iskandar.

Monitoring the popularity of the three pairs of vice presidential candidates was carried out in the period January 29 to February 4.

Berdasarkan pemantuanNetray Media Monitoring terkait popularitas Capres Cawapres, pasangan Prabowo-Gibran kembali merebut posisi pertama, sementara Ganjar-Mahfud harus puas turun ke peringkat kedua setelah sempat berada di urutan tertinggi.

The Prabowo pair pocketed a total of 189,563, while Ganjar-Mahfud received the mention of 174,875, according to the Netray report.

In the last place, the Anies-Muhaimin candidate pair is still occupied because it only gets the mention of 80,906 times.

When viewed from the popularity of individual Vice Presidential Candidates during that period, Gibran Rakabuming Raka is still the popular one. Furthermore, followed by Anies Baswedan who boosted the positions of Ganjar Pranowo and Mahfud MD, who fell one rank each. Prabowo Subianto and Cak Imin are still the same as in the previous period, rank two at the bottom.

Although Ganjar-Mahfud's popularity has decreased, this candidate pair is still ranked first in getting positive sentiment. This candidate pair number three received a positive impression of 65.96 percent of netizens, although this figure has decreased compared to before.

Then followed by Prabowo-Gibran in second place with a percentage of positive sentiment at 49.21 percent. Anies-Muhaimin was at the bottom with positive sentiment of 44.83 percent.

Prabowo-Gibran also became the candidate pair with the most negative sentiment with the acquisition of 24.25 percent, followed by Anies-Muhaimin 15.21 percent and Ganjar-Mahfud with 12.48 percent," continued the Netray report.

The proportion of positive positive sentiment for the candidate pairs is more or less reflected in the achievement of the individual impressions of the presidential and vice presidential candidates. Ganjar's positive sentiment proportion is still the highest, but Mahfud's sentiment this week is quite evenly counted. Mahfud's positive sentiment is still losing compared to Prabowo and Anies Baswedan. Meanwhile, Gibran is still the Vice Presidential Candidate with the highest negative sentiment.

Talking about popularity cannot be separated from electability. Referring to KBBI, electability is the level of electability that is adjusted to the criteria of choice.

Citing Tempo, popularity and electability are two different things, but both have a close relationship. Electability is related to the ability of candidates to influence voter perceptions to choose themselves. Qualification is what will be the criteria for electability.

If electability is built based on candidate qualifications, it is different from popularity that can be increased through promotion, for example campaigns through political advertising.

Advertising is the most influential aspect in winning candidates in the election. The higher one's popularity, the higher the criteria for electability are known to be higher voters, so their electability is also getting higher.

However, this does not mean that high popularity can guarantee high electability. There are times when candidates with high popularity have low electability. This happens because it is known that it does not guarantee that the criteria for electability are suitable for voters.

On the other hand, there are also candidates with high electability but low popularity. Although the criteria for candidate electability are widely liked, they may lose because they are not popular.

For this reason, popularity and electability in elections are two different things, but cannot be separated. High popularity will be in vain if you do not have high electability criteria. It's useless if you have high electability criteria but not popular.

These two aspects, both popularity and electability must go hand in hand because they have an important meaning for candidates.