Chances of New Parties
The presence of a new party has not yet attracted the hearts of voters, perhaps because the party is not actually capable of showing what is new from them
Ahead of the 2024 General Election, a number of new political parties have emerged. There are the Gelora Party, the Ummat Party, the Masyumi Reborn Party, the Indonesian People\'s Da\'wah Party, the Prosperous People\'s Party and maybe many more.
Assuming these parties were founded to contest in elections and to gain seats in the legislative bodies, the question is: What are their chances? The challenges these new parties will have to face in the 2024 election will be even more difficult. Usually, there are two challenges. First, the rules make it tough for parties to qualify to contest in elections. The second is the need for parties to have a sufficient combination of a strong leading figure, a good organizational base and adequate logistics. Now, there is a third challenge, namely the tendency of the party system to stabilize.
Of course, this must be preceded by the ability of the new parties to offer something new to the public, whether in the form of leadership, narrative or program. In other words, it is very difficult for new parties to gain seats in legislative bodies, especially at the national level.
High entry barrier
First, the regulations in the electoral system present an entry barrier that is not easily penetrated by new parties or parties that do not pass the legislative threshold in the previous election. According to Law No. 17/2017 on General Elections (Article 173), new parties must pass two stages of a process to become election contestants, namely administrative verification and factual verification.
There are nine requirements that must be met. Some difficult requirements to fulfil are that political parties must have executive boards in all provinces, have executive boards in 75 percent of the regencies/cities in each province, have executive boards in 50 percent of the districts in the regency/city concerned and have a minimum membership of 1,000 people or 1/1,000 of the total population in the regency/city concerned with a membership card. Another thing that is also not easy is the requirement to have permanent offices at all levels of those executive boards until the final stages of the election are completed. Preparing all of those, of course, takes time, human resources and a lot of funding.
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All those requirements are verified administratively in advance. You can only follow the factual verification process if you pass this administrative verification. These two activities will also consume a lot of time, energy and funds.
Experiences have shown that even the old parties that do not pass the legislative threshold have failed to follow this process several times. The Crescent Star Party (PBB) and the Indonesian Justice and Unity Party (PKPI) did not qualify in the 2019 general election but were later able to contest in the election through a court lawsuit process. If a new party goes through a legal process like this, it will certainly take more time, energy and funds.
Second, when contesting in elections, from the experiences in four general elections since 2004, the parties that can survive are the ones that are able to combine three strengths, namely those with a strong figure, a sufficient organizational base and adequate logistics. Each party needs to have a strong figure at the national level and have the ability to attract figures with influence and followers at the regional level.
The level of public recognition of the party concerned must also be quite good, at least higher than 50 percent of the national average. To run these two things requires a lot of logistics and sufficient time. The 2024 election phase will start around March 2022. The new parties have less than a year from now before the election phase begins. It’s not an easy challenge.
A new party, as the name implies, should easily attract voters if it is truly able to offer something new. A minimum of two novelties must be offered. First, novelty in terms of the figure or leadership. Second, novelty in terms of narrative and program. This is not easy either. In terms of figure, the existing new parties have not yet shown their novelty. Most of them consist of old figures who are also known as politicians. The same goes for the narratives and programs. We haven\'t seen something new yet. Offering novelty on the surface but with old contents will not sell because our voters have sufficient information.
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Stabilization of the party system
The next challenge is a new trend in the form of party system stabilization. This means the competition pattern among political parties is starting to develop and voters are starting to have the habit of voting for parties that are already known and are strong enough to pass the threshold only. These trends, among other things, explain why there was no single new party able to secure seats in the legislature in the 2019 general election. This makes the challenges for new parties even more difficult.
Several indications underline the stabilization of the party system. First, electoral volatility (EV) has experienced a sharp decline, especially in the last three elections (2009, 2014, 2019). EV is the total amount of change in the vote tallies of the parties (decreases and increases) from election to election. The most common way of calculating it is using the Pederson Index (1979). The difference in votes of a party from one election to the next is calculated and then added up with that of other parties plus the total votes for the new party, then divided by two.
Since the 1999 general election, we have had four Pederson Index calculations (IP: 1999-2004, 2004-2009, 2009-2014 and 2014-2019). In order, Indonesia\'s Pederson values were 25.3 percent; 29.5 percent; 19.9 percent; and 12.7 percent. This shows a downward trend in electoral volatility in the last three elections. This means that the number of votes changing between parties in the last three general elections has decreased. In other words, interparty competition shows signs of becoming more stable. If the competition becomes more stable, it will be difficult for new parties to enter.
Didie SW
The electoral volatility figure does not take into account the legislative threshold. If it is also calculated, the EV is getting smaller. This stabilization symptom is consistent with the decreasing total number of votes obtained by new parties from election to election. The peak of the attractiveness of new parties occurred in the 2004 general election. At that time, the total votes obtained by the party were only 21.3 percent, almost the same as the vote gains of the election winner, Golkar (21.6 percent).
Furthermore, the total votes of new parties continued to fall: 17.3 percent (2009), 6.7 percent (2014) and 7.2 percent (2019).
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Votes for new parties fell sharply from 2009 to 2014 and remained relatively unchanged from 2014 to 2019. Most voters channelled their votes to parties that had seats at the House of Representatives. Very few are looking at the new parties. This stabilization phenomenon is also consistent with the number of effective parties in the legislature (ENPP), which has remained relatively unchanged despite the increase in the legislative threshold and the constant presence of new parties in elections. This calculation uses the formula of Laakso and Taagepera (1979). Number one is divided by the square of the total percentage of the number of seats for each party in the House.
Sequentially, Indonesia\'s ENPPs from 2004 to 2019 were 7.08, 6.21, 8.16 and 7.47. So our ENPP, regardless of the number of parties contesting in the election, is quite stable in the 6 to 8 range. Our party system does not experience sharp fluctuations from election to election, although in every election there is always a new party.
Is there still a chance?
This symptom of the stabilization of the party system seems inconsistent with the low level of our voters’ party
identity (party ID). The low level of voters’ party identity can be an indication of the fluidity of voters, and it can make the party system unstable. This is certainly interesting for political scientists. It is possible that our party system is categorized as an “uprooted but stable party system” like in Chile (Luna and Altman, 2011).
If we look at the voters’ low party identity, the chance for a new party is actually still there. Various national surveys in the last 10 years show that very few of our voters feel they have an emotional psychological bond with one party. The January 2021 LSI data shows that our voters’ party identity is only around 12 percent. This means that almost 90 percent of voters do not feel they have any attachment to any single party. Voters seem to be quite open to accepting the presence of a new party in the election.
In other words, the presence of a new party has not yet attracted the hearts of voters, perhaps because the party is not actually capable of showing what is new from them. So it seems that they need not only to define what novelty they are offering but how to communicate it to voters. The dominant voters in the 2024 General Election are young voters, especially the millennial (Y) and post-millennial (Z) generations. These generations are more open to new things if they are communicated according to generational characteristics.
Djayadi Hanan
Another possibility is attracting voters from the old party from which the new party originates. For example, the Ummat Party could focus on trying to win over National Mandate Party (PAN) voters. Similarly, the Gelora Party is making maximum efforts to attract Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) voters. However, this kind of effort is a bit of a gamble because instead of being successful in getting seats in the House, this kind of effort can end up in both of the parties failing to pass the legislative threshold of 4 percent.
Djayadi Hanan, Executive Director of the Indonesian Survey Institute; Lecturer in Political Science at Paramadina University
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswoko.
