A voter casts his ballot at a polling booth during elections in Bogor, West Java, Indonesia April 17, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The results reaffirm Prabowo’s strong foothold in conservative Muslim provinces where his campaign narrative resonated the most. Meanwhile, Jokowi dominates in Eastern Indonesia and Kalimantan just as he did in 2014.
Similar to 2014, the strong support of Nahdlatul Ulama behind Ma’ruf Amin was key to Jokowi’s victory as substantial votes were gained in Central and East Java battlegrounds. Java alone accounts close 60% of the total votes. This success will likely result in a rising influence of NU and PKB in Jokowi’s future cabinet.
LEGISLATIVE ELECTION
On paper, Jokowi has the support of a robust coalition of parties that accounts for 60% of the seats. But these many mouths to feed may be a challenging task in the next few years. How much Jokowi can leverage support in the parliament will be interesting to observe in his second term.
As the elections are over, party coalitions will be more fluid. Demokrat and PAN have already started to show ambiguity in their support for Prabowo’s dispute over election results. They also signaled openness to contribute to Jokowi’s second term. On the other hand, parties behind Jokowi may also go against him in the next five years if he fails to keep them happy as parties have their eyes set to 2024.
Golkar managed to mitigate damages and maintain its position as the second biggest party in the DPR behind PDI-P. Nasdem emerges as a clear winner with a 4-percentage point increase in seats, moved from second to last in 2014 to the fourth largest party. Biggest loser PPP lost 3.66 percentage point. Hanura failed to pass the threshold, thus reducing the number of parties in the parliament to nine.
Surprisingly, Gerindra has failed to leverage on Prabowo’s popularity with only a minuscule gain. Meanwhile, coalition partners PKS enjoyed a significant boost thanks to their consistent opposition to Jokowi which some conservative Muslim voters probably found appealing.
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