Jokowi team steps up campaign amid narrowing lead over rivals

Jokowi team steps up campaign amid narrowing lead over rivals

Three months ago, presidential front runner Joko Widodo was leading his rival Prabowo Subianto by up to 27 percentage points in surveys by two polling outfits.

The lead has since shrunk to 6 percentage points to 7 percentage points, the pollsters' latest findings released on Sunday show.

This is sending a jolt to members of Mr Joko's campaign team even as it appears to be gaining momentum from the candidate's commendable showing in the first two presidential debates.

Polling by the Pol-Tracking Institute and the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) for their separate surveys was done just before the first debate a week ago where Mr Joko, commonly known as Jokowi, and his running mate Jusuf Kalla (JK) were widely seen to have bettered their rivals, Mr Prabowo and his running mate Hatta Rajasa.

Still, the figures confirm what many are saying on the ground and are the first significant indicator that this election is becoming too close to call. They came as the two candidates appeared locked in a dead heat in Sunday night's debate on the economy, and some two weeks after an earlier survey by pollster Populi Centre found Mr Joko leading by a 10 percentage point gap.

"This psychological barrier (of 10 points) has now been breached, and any slip-up by the Jokowi-JK ticket could see them overtaken," analyst Bawono Kumoro of The Habibie Centre think-tank told The Straits Times.

"On the other hand, a slip-up by their rivals could also see the gap widen again," he added, noting that the number of undecided voters was now larger than the difference between the tickets.

The Pol-Tracking Institute on Sunday said Jokowi-JK would get 48.5 per cent of votes and Prabowo-Hatta 42.1 per cent, while the LSI found Jokowi-JK would get 45 per cent against 38.7 per cent for Prabowo-Hatta, with the remaining voters undecided.

LSI researcher Adjie Alfaraby said negative campaigning has hampered Mr Joko's appeal, while Mr Prabowo has been helped by his image as a strong leader and a better-oiled campaign machine.

The worried Jokowi-JK campaign team has been trying to arrest this slide by getting volunteers to go door to door across the country to woo voters and rebut negative perceptions of Mr Joko.

Some are quietly confident a silent majority of rural voters, more of whom felt Mr Joko did better during the debates, will back him, although this may not be enough for Mr Joko to regain the momentum he needs to secure the win.

But a wild card could also emerge. Mr Adjie says unanswered questions over Mr Prabowo's involvement in human rights violations and the abduction of activists in 1998 - which less than a third of voters know about - could see Mr Prabowo's numbers stagnate or fall if the issue is more widely known.

Yesterday, both campaign teams got to work to amplify their candidates' strong points during Sunday's debate and attack where their rivals fell flat.

Hitting out at Mr Prabowo's rhetoric, Jokowi-JK campaign spokesman Hasto Kristianto said: "It is up to the people to choose whether they want a leader who can talk up big numbers and tell stories well, but lacks experience, or have a leader who is modest, but speaks the language of the people and is grounded in their needs."

Others took issue with Mr Prabowo's claim that some 1,000 trillion rupiah (S$110 billion) leaked out of the economy every year. Did he forget, they said, that his running mate Hatta Rajasa was coordinating minister for the economy over the past five years?

Meanwhile, Mr Prabowo's campaign team has countered criticisms that his economic plans were vague by saying he had a big-picture grasp of the issues at stake needed for a president, whereas Mr Joko's attention to practical solutions on the ground was befitting a governor's role.

Prabowo-Hatta campaign spokesman Tantowi Yahya said: "We believe Mr Prabowo's performance last night, and in the coming debates, will further raise his electability. We'll also reach out to voters in person."

Observers say the narrow margin between the two sides means they will try to capitalise on their rivals' weaknesses in the coming weeks, especially to court middle- class and urban voters.

And it will be a tight race to the finish because, as Mr Bawono notes, quite a number will decide whom to vote for only days before the July 9 election.

zakirh@sph.com.sg


This article was first published on June 17, 2014.
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