Popular Figures Do Not Automatically Boost Political Party Electability

PDI-P cadre Kris Dayanti (right) attended a cultural parade towards the KPU Building to propose a candidate for DPR member in Jakarta, Thursday (11/5/2023). (Between)

JAKARTA Political parties open the door for popular figures who want to contest elections, either as members of the legislature, regional head, or president. Because, it is believed that the popularity of figures will provide electoral positive benefits to parties that carry them as candidates.

For legislative elections, for example, many political parties have registered candidates from celebrities ranging from film players, musicians, and singers. If there are 65 celebrities who are ready to leave the 2024 General Election

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) registered 15 names of celebrities including Rano Karno, Rieke Diah Pitaloka, Kris Dayanti, Once Mekel, Andre Hehanusa, Marcel Siahaan, Denny Cagur, Harvey Maleihiolo, and Tamara Geraldine.

The National Mandate Party registered 10 names such as Eko Patrio, Pasha Ungu, Desy Ratnasari, Primus Yustisio, Uya Kuya, Varrel Bramasta, Ely Sugigi, and others.

The Nasdem Party registered 8 names ranging from Reza Artamevia, Annisa Bahar, Nafa Urbach, Didi Riyadi, to Ramzi.

Likewise, other parties such as Gerindra, the National Awakening Party, the Democratic Party, and the Prosperous Justice Party. In total there are 65 celebrities who are ready to leave the 2024 General Election.

For regional head elections, look at what the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) does. PSI took momentum by becoming the first party to support Kaesang Pangarep to advance in the election for the mayor of Depok.

A number of people believe that PSI clearly wants to find a coat effect from the popularity of President Jokowi's youngest son in order to increase party electability and attract young voters who dominate the list of voters in Depok City.

For the presidential election, look also at the steps taken by the Nasdem Party. When other parties were still busy looking for a coalition, Nasdem in October 2022 became the first party to officially declare a presidential candidate.

The choice of falling to Anies Baswedan, who throughout 2022 has always been in the top three positions as the highest electability figure in almost every survey institution.

After the declaration, the electability of the Nasdem Party continued to increase to reach 6.4 percent according to the results of the survey by Indonesian Political Indicators in February-March 2023. In fact, said Executive Director of Indonesian Political Indicators, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, this is Nasdem's highest electability achievement compared to its electoral level in the history of Nasdem preparation in the previous two elections.

"So we can draw a little conclusion, Nasdem has received positive incentives for Anies' declaration as a presidential candidate," said Burhanuddin in March.

The results of the previous Kompas Research and Development survey also showed the same thing. However, the positive incentives were not felt by two other parties that supported Anies, the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

Instead of increasing, the electability of these two parties actually decreased. The Democratic Party from 14 percent to 8.7 percent and PKS from 6.3 percent to 4.8 percent according to the Kompas Research and Development survey on January 25 to February 4, 2023.

This condition proves that the effect of a suit tail on the popularity of a figure is not absolute in increasing electability. Many other determining factors. The Democratic Party has actually also proven in the previous election.

The Democratic Party's vote in the 2009 election increased dramatically from 7.45 percent to 20.4 percent or 21.7 million votes in line with the increasing public trust in President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's (SBY) performance in the first period.

However, in the 2014 election, it immediately fell, only getting 12.7 million votes. This is believed not only because of the declining level of public trust in SBY, but also because of the track record of Democratic Party cadres who at that time were heavily entangled in corruption cases.

Then, when referring to the results of the 2019 Election, did the PDI-P, Golkar Party, Nasdem Party, PKB, PPP, and Hanura Party get a significant vote for proposing Jokowi and Ma'ruf Amin as pairs of presidential and vice presidential candidates?

Professor of political comparisons at Airlangga University, Ramlan Surbakti in his opinion in Kompas Daily on July 12, 2019, wrote that from the results of the 2019 election for DPR members set by the KPU on May 21, 2019 (before the Constitutional Court's decision on disputes over the results of the general election/PHPU), it turned out that the PDI-P only experienced a very small increase, 0.38 percent compared to the results of the 2014 DPR election.

The party supporting the Jokowi-Ma'ruf pair who experienced the highest increase was Nasdem, which was 2.33 percent. Even so, it is difficult to determine whether the increase in the number of Nasdem votes occurred solely because it proposed the Jokowi-Ma'ruf pair.

Especially if you look at the number of votes obtained by 10 political parties supporting the Jokowi-Ma'ruf pair in the election of members of the DPR which reached 62.01 percent. Meanwhile, the number of votes obtained by the Jokowi-Ma'ruf pair in the presidential election reached 55.50 percent. This means that there are 6.51 percent of voters from 10 parties supporting the Jokowi-Ma'ruf pair who chose the Prabowo-Sandi pair.

"In short, the tail of the coat does not have a significant effect," said Ramlan.

Maybe only parties can show their strongest commitment to getting the tail of a suit. Nasdem's voice increased, it could be because Nasdem was the first party to express its support for Jokowi as a presidential candidate in the 2019 election. Not to mention with the support of positive news for Jokowi from the media held by the Chairman of the Nasdem Party, Surya Paloh.

As written by the Executive Director of the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) Djayadi Hanan in his opinion, it is theoretically difficult to obtain the effect of a tail of a suit if it is only a supporter of the coalition, especially small parties. They will process the benefits of the tail of the suit if they have a role as sponsors as proposers.

The effect of the tail of the coat will benefit the party which is considered to have the strongest relationship. This is usually related to two things: ideology and strategy consistency," said Djayadi.