SMRC: The Majority Of Voters Don't Want Presidential Candidates To Change But Continue Jokowi's Program

President Jokowi. (doc BPMI Setpes-Muchlis)

JAKARTA - The survey results of Saiful Mujani Research And Consulting (SMRC) show that the majority of critical voters want a presidential candidate (candidate) to be able to continue the government program of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).

SMRC Research Director Deni Irvani said, there are 57 percent of critical voters who want presidential candidates to carry narratives as a continuation of the current government program.

Meanwhile, as many as 33 percent of critical voters want presidential candidates to change Jokowi's program.

"The majority want 57 percent of the presidential candidates to continue the current government program. The number is more than those who want presidential candidates who will change President Jokowi's program," Deni said in a press statement, Tuesday, May 9.

Deni added that 10 percent of the other critical voters did not know or did not answer.

Critical voters are voters who have cell phones, so they are considered to have more access to sources of social and political information and critically assess various problems.

Deni added that the survey related to community preferences was conducted twice, namely on April 25-28, 2023 and May 2-5, 2023.

"We have conducted a survey by asking this question twice. The results are very consistent," he explained.

The survey results on April 25-28 are known to be as many as 59 percent of critical voters want a presidential candidate who can continue Jokowi's program, while 33 percent of respondents want the presidential candidate to change the program and 8 percent of other respondents don't answer or don't know.

Deni also explained that public preference for the presidential candidate who continued the program was related to the level of public satisfaction with Jokowi's performance.

This means, he continued, people who are satisfied with Jokowi's performance tend to want presidential candidates who can continue the program, and vice versa.

"We are cross-testing the level of satisfaction with the government's performance, in this case President Jokowi, with a preference for presidential candidates; it turns out that there is a significant association," he said.

Furthermore, from the second survey on May 2-5, 2023, there were 78.8 percent of critical voters who were satisfied with Jokowi's performance; while 18.1 percent of other respondents were dissatisfied and the remaining 3.1 percent did not know or did not answer.

"So, this produces electoral values for candidates who carry the theme of sustainability compared to candidates who carry the theme of change," said Deni.

The selection of samples in the SMRC survey was carried out through the random digit dialing (RDD) method. RDD is a technique for randomly selecting samples through the process of generating telephone numbers.

With RDD techniques, a sample of 925 respondents was selected through the process of random phone number generation, validation, and screening.

The survey margin of error is estimated at around 3.3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level, assuming a simple random sampling. Interviews with respondents were conducted by telephone by trained interviewers.

To note, registration for presidential and vice-presidential candidates is scheduled for October 19 to November 25, 2023.

Based on Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning Elections (UU Pemilu), pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates are proposed by political parties or coalitions of political parties participating in the election who meet the requirements for obtaining seats of at least 20 percent of the total seats in the DPR or obtaining 25 percent of valid votes nationally in the previous election for members of the DPR.

Currently, there are 575 seats in parliament, so that the pairs of presidential and vice-presidential candidates in the 2024 presidential election must have at least 115 seats in the DPR RI. It is also possible that the candidate pairs can be promoted by political parties or a combination of political parties participating in the 2019 Election with a total valid vote acquisition of at least 34,992,703 votes.