SMRC Survey: PDIP Has More Winning Chance In Presidential Election If Carrying Ganjar Pranowo

Ganjar Pranowo/DOC. Central java Provincial Government PR via ANTARA

JAKARTA - The Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) survey shows that the PDI-P's chances of victory are greater if it nominates Ganjar Pranowo as a presidential candidate than Puan Maharani.

"Our data shows that if Ganjar is the one nominated by the PDI-P, the hopes for the PDI-P to win the presidential election and have a president again are open," said SMRC founder Saiful Mujani in a written statement quoted by ANTARA, Thursday, September 15.

Based on the semi-open survey format from March 2021 to August 2022, he said, the movement of Puan's vote was not significant, from 0.5 percent to 1 percent. Meanwhile, Ganjar Pranowo moved from 8.8 percent to 25.5 percent. Prabowo from 20 percent to 16.7 percent and Anies Baswedan from 11.2 percent to 14.4 percent.

According to Saiful, if the conditions are like now, it will be difficult for PDIP to nominate Puan. For example, if Puan competes with Prabowo and Anies, survey data shows that Puan is far behind and not competitive.

"The competition (Puan against Prabowo or Anies) is unfair because the gap is too big. If you have to go forward and PDI-P has a target to win, the challenge will be very heavy," he said.

In the simulation of three names without Ganjar, the SMRC survey from December 2021 to August 2022 showed that Puan's vote moved from 10.1 percent to 7.8 percent. Meanwhile, Prabowo Subianto from 40 percent to 40.2 percent and Anies from 28.1 percent to 27.5 percent.

"If you are forced to go forward with conditions like this, the PDI-P's hopes of having another president will be difficult," said Saiful.

However, if the PDI-P nominates Ganjar, who is currently the Governor of Central Java, the result is likely that the PDI-P will win the 2024 presidential election contestation.

According to Saiful, if in the simulation of the three figures Puan's name was removed and Ganjar entered to fight Prabowo and Anies, the result would be an increase in Ganjar's vote from 25.5 percent in May 2021 to 32 percent in August 2022.

Meanwhile, Prabowo weakened from 34.1 percent to 30.8 percent and Anies was relatively stable from 23.5 percent to 21.9 percent in the same period.

In a survey from February to March 2021, 60 percent of the people who knew Puan said they liked her. In the last survey in August 2022, it decreased to 44 percent.

"This is a problem because the level of public acceptance of Puan is low and tends to get weaker," he said.

The acceptance rate for Ganjar is the highest (83 percent in the August 2022 survey). This is consistent with its high electability level. Anies' acceptance rate is also high (74 percent). Compared to Prabowo (71 percent), Anies' acceptance rate is higher.

This survey is face-to-face from 5 to 13 August 2022. The population of this survey is all Indonesian citizens who have the right to vote in general elections, namely those who are 17 years old or older, or already married at the time of the survey.

From that population, 1,220 respondents were selected randomly (stratified multistage random sampling). The response rate is 1,053 or 86 percent. The margin of error for the survey with the sample size is ± 3.1 percent at a 95 percent confidence level (assuming simple random sampling).