SMRC Survey Results: 41 Percent Of NasDem Voters Support Ganjar, 31 Percent Anies

Chairman of the NasDem Party Surya Paloh announced the names of three presidential candidates who will be recommended by the National Working Meeting of the NasDem Party to be carried in the 2024 presidential election. /PHOTO: Nailin In Saroh-VOI

JAKARTA - The survey institute Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) released its findings regarding the presidential candidates to be chosen by voters from the National Democratic Party (NasDem).

It is known, the NasDem Party has announced three names from the recommendations of the National Working Meeting that will be carried as presidential candidates in the 2024 General Election.

The three names are DKI Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, TNI Commander Andika Perkasa, and Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo.

"The survey results show that 41 percent of NasDem voters will vote for Ganjar if the presidential election is held now, 31 percent will vote for Anies, 12 percent for Prabowo," said Saiful Mujani in the Political Surgery program episode 'NasDem Voters Support Anies or Ganjar?' via the SMRC TV YouTube channel on Saturday, June 18. According to Saiful, this data is quite coherent or consistent with the opinion developed by the NasDem elite at the national working meeting (Rakernas).

Although the order of gaining support is different, according to him, the two big names supported by the elite and mass of NasDem voters are quite consistent.

"In general, the aspirations developed by the NasDem DPW are quite consistent with the NasDem voters themselves. This means that NasDem listens to what their own voters say," explained the SMRC founder.

Saiful explained that the findings were interesting because Ganjar was a PDI-P cadre.

In the media, Ganjar also stated that he was still a PDI-P cadre.

"This shows that NasDem is quite open to various aspirations that develop in society," he said.

The Professor of Political Science at UIN Jakarta added that one of the possible reasons why NasDem is quite open to names growing in society is because the main figure of the Nasdem party, Surya Paloh, will not run.

"NasDem may be able to claim, please use NasDem as a vehicle to convey the aspirations and political interests of the wider community," said Saiful.

In the last three surveys conducted by SMRC, continued Saiful, the support for Gerindra General Chair Prabowo Subianto from the NasDem voters was quite large, namely 57 percent in December 2021.

However, in the last 5 months it has decreased significantly to 12 percent in the May 2022 survey.

Meanwhile, Ganjar's vote increased from 22 percent to 41 percent.

Likewise with Anies, from 10 percent to 31 percent in the same period.

The SMRC survey also looks at the tendencies of other parties towards the names of the three most popular figures.

Saiful said the majority of PDI-P voters, 58 percent, would vote for Ganjar.

Meanwhile, in general, Gerindra voters, 62 percent, will vote for Prabowo Subianto, and most PKS supporters, 59 percent, will vote for Anies.

Saiful assessed that the support of the majority of the PDIP voters to Ganjar and the Gerindra masses to Prabowo was reasonable because both of them came from these parties.

Meanwhile, the PKS mass support for Anies, although not a cadre, may have been chosen because of the similarity of values.

Another reason is that PKS is the bearer of Anies in the DKI Jakarta Pilkada.

"Already have a political record. So it is natural that the majority of PKS voters choose Anies," he concluded.

The SMRC survey was conducted on 10-17 May 2022 using a random sampling method which included 1,220 respondents.

Meanwhile, the margin of error for the survey with this sample size is estimated at ± 3.07 percent at a 95 percent confidence level (assuming simple random sampling).