A New Era of Young Voters
The position of young voters in the future is predicted to be more strategic in the national political constellation ahead of the 2024 General Election. This is due to the high penetration of young voters to social media
The COVID-19 pandemic gives important meaning to our politics going forward and has changed many things in our politics, especially regarding the process of formulating and making policies.
This change can be seen from the faster public policy-making process, the need to quickly adapt to situations that are vulnerable to change and the demand to collaborate with non-state actors. From the public side, especially young voters, there have also been changes. This can be seen in their changed perspective in viewing public issues and the national leadership in the future.
Ahead of the 2024 General Election, Indonesia will enter a new era in electoral politics. This new era is marked by the presence of dynamic, adaptive and rational young voters. Young voters are predicted to reach 60 percent of Indonesia's total voters in 2024. If you refer to the Indonesia Statistics (BPS) 2020 Population Census data, the proportion of young voters is quite large. The 2020 census shows that the proportion of voters aged 15-39 years is at 41.06 percent.
If we convert the population of 15-39 year old people with the number of voters that is currently more than 190 million, the proportion of young voters reaches 54 percent. In the next two years, the proportion of voters aged 17-39 is predicted to approach 60 percent.
Also read:
> Young Voters want Corruption-Free Leader
> Political Parties Need to Work Hard to Meet Expectations of Young Voters
This large number will certainly affect how the political design and development policies will be prepared by parties and presidential candidates in approaching young voters. With the character of young voters as information literate, parties and candidates must of course be careful in designing the direction of future development policies.
The characteristics of the new young voters (generation Z and millennials) can be seen from their interest in and attention to domestic and global policy issues, such as health, the environment, employment, democracy and corruption eradication issues. At least that is what has emerged from the main findings of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) national public opinion survey released a few days ago. The target sample in the survey is voters aged 17-39 years.
What makes these young voters strategic and important in the 2024 Election? Generations of young voters have different political orientations and attitudes from other generations. In the last 2-3 years, young voters have a high interest in political issues and strategic policies, beyond the old issues. They are interested in issues of climate change and energy, employment, health, corruption and democratization.
Moreover, what makes them different is their digital behavior. Internet and social media penetration has increased from previous years. The younger generation of voters is adaptive in responding to changing trends in the digital world. Compared to four years ago, there has been a significant increase in the main sources of information for young people. According to the findings of the CSIS (2022), the function of social media as their main information reference rose from 39.5 percent (2018) to 59 percent (2022).
The position of young voters in the future is predicted to be more strategic in the national political constellation ahead of the 2024 General Election. This is due to the high penetration of young voters to social media, which is already above 90 percent (CSIS, 2022). At the same time, there has also been an increase in public access to social media, which is already above 60 percent (CSIS, 2021).
The younger generation of voters is adaptive in responding to changing trends in the digital world.
The last difference is a matter of typology and the character of the national leadership in 2024 which is changing. Young people like leaders who are clean, have integrity and are anti-corruption. Young people also represent a critical and appreciative generation.
Besides being critical of the performance of public institutions and the quality of democracy, they are also appreciative of the achievements and performance of the government. This can be seen from the high satisfaction of young people with the government's achievements in handling COVID-19. This generation's constitutional commitment is also high, as can be seen from the high resistance against the idea to extend the presidential office term to three terms and support for direct presidential elections.
Leadership
The issue of leadership also marks a change in the current generation of young voters. Compared to the two previous elections (2014 and 2019), there is a shift in the leadership orientation of young voters. In the CSIS national survey (2019), most voters (37.9 percent) still favored leaders who are simple and populist and only 11.9 percent preferred honest and anti-corruption leaders. Currently, the opposite is happening with most young voters (34.8 percent) who like honest and anti-corruption leaders and 15.9 percent like simple and populist leaders.
The young generation living in a pandemic, which Faisal (2021) calls the pandemic generation, is experiencing difficult situations and uncertainties in the post-pandemic global economy, as well as the impact of climate change. These domestic and global conditions affect the way they view politics and policies.
The pandemic has had an effect on changing the perspective of young people about leadership, which has changed from a personal aspect to a technocratic aspect. It is not surprising that in the 2024 election, as found by the CSIS survey, young people want leaders who are able to make changes, are innovative, are able to lead in crisis situations and manage budgets that are on target.
In the 2024 election, there are several political issues that can affect the choice of presidential candidates and political parties, including issues related to job opportunities, corruption eradication programs and law enforcement, as well as other strategic issues (health, economy and the environment). Candidates who have programs to provide job opportunities and eradicate corruption and are perceived as clean and with integrity are predicted to gain high support from young voters.
When the survey was conducted, the electoral conditions between candidates were still competitive, although there was a trend of strengthening support for one candidate during the head to head simulation test (two names). The electoral situation of the candidates changed when we conducted a simulation test of 14 names, 7 names, 3 names and 2 names. This change and strengthening can be explained by the migration of voter votes from certain candidates to the candidates tested in the head-to-head simulation.
Political participation
In terms of political interest, our young people also have a desire to run for legislative members and regional heads. The number of interests is quite good when compared to the decline in public confidence in political parties. The CSIS (2022) found that nearly 15 percent of young people are interested in running for either legislative or regional heads.
The problem is that political parties do not seem to have prepared a mechanism for young people to have careers in political parties. When we asked, only 1.1 percent of respondents claimed to be members of parties or party wing organizations. If the party can clean up and prepare a mechanism for young people to be active in the party, it is predicted that the involvement of young people as party cadres can slowly increase.
Also read:
> Changing Party Coalition Trends
> Papua’s Regional Proliferation Risks End Ep in Flip-Flopping Governance
Another aspect that distinguishes our youth from the situation in other democracies is participation in elections. In the midst of the volatile trend of young voter participation in elections (voter turnout) in many democracies such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, as Martin (2012) found, the trend of young voter participation in Indonesia shows an increasing trend. Based on survey findings (CSIS 2022), there was an increase in the participation of young voters from 85.9 percent in the 2014 election to 91.3 percent in the 2019 election.
In the midst of the increasingly strategic and important role of young voters, in the future political parties will need to find a mechanism by providing special allocations or quotas in the nomination of young people in the 2024 General Election. It is important to do this considering the low representation of elected House of Representatives (DPR) members aged 17-39 years. In the future, in the midst of increasingly complex trends and challenges in public policy, there is a need for active participation of young voters in a more participatory public policy-making process.
The high penetration of the internet and social media among young people will certainly affect the political map in the future. Social media will at some stage shape young people's perceptions of politics and policies. For this reason, young people are expected to be the initiators of future changes, especially encouraging our elections based on policies and programs.
Arya Fernandes, Head of the Department of Politics and Social Change, CSIS
This article was translated by Kurniawan Siswo.