Jokowi's Tour to Regions Boosts Vote for Prabowo-Gibran, Expert Says

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - An economic expert from the University of Indonesia (UI) Vid Adrison assessed that President Joko Widodo or Jokowi's tours to various regions boosted the votes for the presidential and vice presidential candidate pair number 02, Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka who is his eldest son, in the 2024 election.

“We recorded that President Jokowi made a tour between October 22, 2023, and February 1, 2024, to 30 regencies/cities and delivered social assistance 44 times,” Vid said during the hearing of the 2024 presidential election dispute at the Constitutional Court, on Monday, April 1.

Vid testified before the court as an expert for Petitioner I, candidate pair number 01 Anies Baswedan-Muhaimin Iskandar.

He explained that 50 percent of the regions visited by the President were in Central Java, and the total social aid delivered in the province amounted to Rp347 billion. Meanwhile, candidate pair 02 visited only nine regencies/cities; three regions in Central Java, three regions in East Java, one region in Lampung, one region in East Nusa Tenggara, and one region in South Sulawesi.

“What is the effect of these visits [by Jokowi]? I did another statistical test, and it turns out that there was actually a fairly large increase in the number of votes for candidate pair 02 compared to Prabowo's votes in the 2019 presidential election,” Vid explained.

The average increase in the votes was 32 percent, with a minimum of 6.3 percent and a maximum of 66.3 percent. He emphasized that there was no evidence that Prabowo's votes in the 2019 presidential election were related to his vote acquisition in this year’s election.

“Jokowi's visits are effective in increasing Prabowo's votes in 2024,” Vid concluded.

He estimated that there are around 26 million additional votes for Prabowo-Gibran. The visits, he went on, were also proven to reduce the vote share for candidate pair number 03 Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud Md.

“The estimated vote share for Prabowo without the President's support and social assistance programs was 42.38 percent. This is close to Prabowo-Gibran's electability from the pollster Charta's survey, on January 4-11, which was at 42.20 percent,” Vid explained.

Today’s hearing was the third with the agenda to hear the testimonies of witnesses and experts from the Anies-Muhaimin camp as Petitioner I. Meanwhile, the third hearing of the election dispute case lodged by the Ganjar-Mahfud camp as Petitioner II will be held on Tuesday, April 2.

AMELIA RAHIMA SARI

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