SMRC Survey: The COVID-19 Pandemic Has Even Increased Jokowi's Performance Satisfaction

President Jokowi (DOK Instagram Jokowi)

JAKARTA - The Saiful Mujani Research Center (SMRC) survey institute released an opinion poll regarding the satisfaction of President Joko Widodo's performance during the one-year COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, as of March 2021, as many as 77 percent of the majority said they were satisfied with Jokowi's performance. About 23 percent said they were dissatisfied. Meanwhile, 0.6 percent did not answer.

Executive Director of SMRC, Sirojudin Abbas, explained the trend of Jokowi's satisfaction over the past year. He said, there was a slight decrease of 3 percent in Jokowi's satisfaction from 72 percent in March 2020 to 69 percent in October 2020.

"But from October to March 2021 there was a fairly large increase, from 69 percent to 77 percent. If we look at from January 2019 to March 2021, satisfaction with the performance of President Jokowi has increased", said Sirojudin in a virtual survey presentation, Thursday, April 1.

Meanwhile, public dissatisfaction with Jokowi's performance has actually decreased. In January 2019, satisfaction with Jokowi was 28 percent.

Then, in March 2020 the trend of dissatisfaction decreased to 26 percent. Dissatisfaction with Jokowi increased in October 2020 by 30 percent. Furthermore, it decreased again in March 2021 by 22 percent.

"So, economic conditions, political conditions, during the pandemic this past year have not harmed satisfaction with President Jokowi's performance. What happened has actually increased", said Sirojudin.

Meanwhile, if you look at the overall performance of the government, both line ministries and institutions, as many as 69 percent of the people are satisfied with the government's performance in handling COVID-19. Then, as many as 29.4 percent of the public admitted they were dissatisfied, and 1 percent did not answer.

"If we look at the trend compared to October, there is indeed an increase in satisfaction in the assessment of the performance of the central government involved in handling COVID-19. There is an increase from 61 percent in October 2020. There is an 18 percent increase in the last 5 months", he explained.

This survey was conducted in the period 28 February to 8 March 2021. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 1,220 randomly selected respondents. The margin of error for this survey is estimated to be around 3.07 percent and the survey's confidence level is 95 percent.