2024 Presidential Election Axis
In addition to considering the nominated presidential candidate’s chance to win power, the party has also to place public preference as the top priority in decision-making.
Heryunanto
The 2024 presidential election will not be contested by an incumbent. The fight for presidential glory will melt into a more open battleground. What is the map of the possible party coalitions for the upcoming presidential election?
Antony Downs, in his classic work, An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), states that the main motivation of political parties behind the policies and actions is to gain as many votes as possible.
Therefore, the first axiom that needs to be recognized in the discourse about party maneuvers in seeking a candidate for national leader is that the political parties will build a coalition with the prime mission of pushing their candidate to power. Only by winning the presidential office are they able to take part in the coalition-based government.
PDI-P axis
In discussions among the elite, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) will be forming a coalition axis. Apart from being the winner of the election and the only party that can nominate a president and vice president without a coalition, the party also has a number of popular cadres who have the potential to run as presidential and vice presidential candidates. Based on elite maneuvers and signals, the PDI-P, or Teuku Umar, axis has three scenarios for its presidential candidacy.
In the first scenario, Puan Maharani runs as a presidential candidate. If this scenario works, the PDI-P will need the support of other candidates or parties to cover Puan's low popularity, which has yet to shape up. A survey by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC), in a poll of 15 names, found that preference for Puan was still in the range of 1.4 percent.
The current potential coalition partner candidate is the Gerindra Party. The close relationship between the PDI-P and Gerindra has been around for a long time, even though in the last two presidential elections they found themselves in opposing camps. The question is whether Gerindra will give in and allow the nomination of a presidential candidate from another party. It seems that a Puan-Prabowo Subianto pairing (where Puan would be the presidential candidate and Prabowo the vice presidential candidate) would be relatively difficult to realize.
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So, the second scenario is that the PDI-P and Gerindra coalition have Prabowo promoted as a presidential candidate, while PDI-P cadres, such as Puan, become vice presidential candidates.
The main snag in this combination is the likely unwillingness of the PDI-P to be content with only a vice presidential candidate. As the winner of the previous election, the PDI-P's presidential bargaining power is strong. If the PDI-P accepts an offer to nominate a vice presidential candidate from another party, this would pull away from the mainstream aspirations of the party elite and the party masses at the grassroots. Thus, this second scenario will also be quite a difficult option to choose.
The third scenario is that the PDI-P nominates the candidate with the greatest popular support at the moment: Ganjar Pranowo. In a poll conducted by SMRC, of the prominent PDI-P cadres, Ganjar consistently ranked first in electability. In the mid-September 2021 survey, Ganjar was in the top three most popular figures for the presidential candidacy.
Heryunanto
Ganjar's share of the vote was 15.8 percent in the poll of 42 names, 19 percent in the poll of 15 names, 20.5 percent in the poll of eight names and 29.3 percent in the poll of three names.
His electability has also consistently increased. It is true that currently Prabowo's electability is still quite high, but the trend over the past year shows that public preference for Prabowo has tended to decrease, while Ganjar’s continues to increase.
Currently, the level of public knowledge of these two figures is not balanced. Prabowo is already known to 98 percent of the public, while Ganjar to only 67 percent.
Meanwhile, in the next election, public knowledge about the two candidates will be similar after the election campaigns. Therefore, the candidates’ electability can be assessed by analyzing the citizens’ choices of the competing candidates whom they are familiar with.
The SMRC survey shows that, assuming voters’ familiarity with the figures, in this case Ganjar, Prabowo and several others, Ganjar is the most preferable of any other candidate, including Prabowo. This may give an indication that Ganjar enjoys more public affinity than Prabowo.
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Of all the respondents who knew Ganjar, 85 percent said they liked him, while out of the 98 percent who knew Prabowo, only 76 percent said they liked him. This means that public resistance to Prabowo is greater than to Ganjar.
With the axiom that the party strives to succeed in its presidential candidate nomination, the third scenario, with Ganjar being pushed into a presidential candidacy, is still the most rational option for the PDI-P today.
However, If the PDI-P nominates Ganjar as a presidential candidate, it is likely that the PDI-P and Gerindra coalition plan will not materialize because Gerindra is most likely to persist in advancing Prabowo as a presidential candidate.
The PDI-P could advance a presidential candidate on its own, but it does not seem to be a workable option. It is likely that the party will seek coalition partners to strengthen its current position.
In four direct presidential elections, PDI-P three times picked cadres from the Muslim organization Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) as vice presidential candidates: Hasyim Muzadi (2004), Jusuf Kalla (2014) and Ma'ruf Amin (2019).
With this trend, it is most likely that the PDI-P will again consider maintaining close relations with the NU masses. The United Development Party (PPP) and the National Awakening Party (PKB) have the opportunity to be part of this coalition by proposing vice presidential candidates who are NU members, either the politically allied figures in the party structural board or those part of NU’s cultural sphere, such as Said Aqil Siroj.
Prabowo axis
The second axis that has the potential to emerge, of course, is Hambalang. Here, Prabowo is the main magnet. Prabowo has two main strengths: his high electability and his leadership of Gerindra, which has become a stable political vehicle with significant popular support.
This axis can bring back old partner parties from the last two presidential elections, including the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the National Mandate Party (PAN).
An opposition axis may also see a convergence of the Democratic Party and PKS. PAN, which has a special affinity with the Democrats, can join this axis. A Democrat, PKS and PAN coalition would meet the threshold requirements for nominating a candidate for president.
Four potential candidates are on the list: Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono (AHY), Salim Segaf Al-Jufri, Zulkifli Hasan and Anies Baswedan. Of these four names, Anies is the most popular figure.
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This opposition axis faces quite a huge challenge, one of which is to unite the three parties. These three parties have relatively few prominent figures. Among party leaders, AHY is in first place based on current electability polling.
However, the support for AHY is still relatively low, at 4.5 percent, as shown in the poll of 15 names in the last SMRC survey. Likewise, PKS and PAN do not have figures with truly reliable competitiveness.
Therefore, there are two alternatives for the opposition axis. The first is proposing Anies as a presidential candidate. With Anies perceived as representing PKS, the vice presidential candidate will come from the Democrats or PAN.
The second alternative for the opposition axis is to fall back on a coalition under Prabowo's umbrella. This second alternative is more likely to happen than the first. The question is, who will be the vice presidential candidate for Prabowo?
Yellow axis
The last axis that has the potential to emerge is a Golkar-Nasdem coalition. Golkar and Nasdem have an emotional closeness, given that Nasdem founder Surya Paloh is a former Golkar cadre who once held the highest position in the banyan party as advisory council chairman.
Both Golkar and Nasdem have shown outstanding political performances. As a relatively new party, Nasdem has built up itself very convincingly.
In a number of regions, especially in eastern Indonesia, Nasdem has emerged as a major political force, while Golkar has managed to maintain its existence as one of the largest parties since 1999.
Golkar itself has a record worth reckoning with when it comes to the privilege of nominating its own cadres for presidential elections, both as presidential and vice presidential candidates.
In the past four direct presidential elections, only in the 2019 presidential election did Golkar not have a cadre in the run-off.
The magnet for this coalition could come from Golkar Party chairman Airlangga Hartarto. He may not be popular enough at the grassroots level, but among the elite, the coordinating economic minister is widely acceptable.
Each party needs to carefully determine which presidential candidate they will carry.
Within the party’s internal board, he has succeeded in uniting various factions that were previously plagued by threats of division.
His positions as the coordinating economic minister and the Covid-19 national economic recovery task force chair have made him a conspicuous figure in the nation’s struggle to recover from the economic and health crisis.
This is evidently a political appeal to a coalition formation. Airlangga has demonstrated his charisma, both as a leader of a major party and a technocrat with highly recognized work performance, especially in the national economic and public health recovery from the pandemic.
The axis coalition could consider other popular figures, such as Ridwan Kamil and Anies Baswedan, as candidates. Ridwan is reportedly open to the possibility of joining a political party. If he joins Nasdem, for example, the combination of Airlangga and Ridwan is quite likely to be an option. What remains is to decide which of the two will be number one.
One of the major parties that can join this coalition is the Democratic Party. This can happen if the Democrats fail to establish communication with the opposition or Prabowo axis. In addition to being a party with a national ideology, the Democrats also have a historical affinity for Golkar.
In addition to the axiom of thrusting their candidate into the presidency, political parties need to consider the weight of electoral gains in the legislative election on the choice of the presidential candidate.
Saidiman Ahmad
An experimental survey conducted by SMRC in 2021 found that a political party's decision to nominate a presidential candidate weighed significantly on the outcome of their legislative election.
Therefore, each party needs to carefully determine which presidential candidate they will carry. In addition to considering the nominated presidential candidate’s chance to win power, the party has also to place public preference as the top priority in decision-making.
Saidiman Ahmad, Program manager of Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC); doctoral student in Political Science at the University of Indonesia.
This article was translated by Musthofid.
