Ahok Leads in Jakarta Gubernatorial Election Poll, Big Time
Jakarta. With less than a year to go before the 2017 Jakarta governor election, incumbent Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, is topping the latest electability survey run by Charta Politika, leaving his closest contender Yusril Ihza Mahendra far behind.
The survey – conducted from March 15 to March 20 and involving 400 Jakartans living across the city and the Thousand Islands – placed Basuki at the top of a list of 14 governor candidates, with 51.8 percent of the respondents saying they would vote for him, leaving Yusril at second place with only 11 percent saying they would support the former state secretary and justice minister.
Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini took third place with 7.3 percent, followed by Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician Hidayat Nur Wahid with 3.3 percent and former minister Adhyaksa Dault with 3 percent.
Businessman Sandiaga Uno was in sixth place with just 1.5 percent, just behind controversial Jakarta City Council deputy speaker Abraham Lunggana, or Lulung, at 1.8 percent.
“Yusril is the closest contender to Basuki, but the gap is still pretty wide,” Yunarto Wijaya, executive director of Charta Politika, during a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.
In a head-to-head simulated contest between Basuki and Yusril, the incumbent still came out on top with 59.5 percent of support, while the chairman of the Crescent Star Party (PKB) only gathered 20 percent.
“But this head-to-head battle is unlikely to happen as Yusril will likely struggle to get all the political parties to support him, while Basuki is well on his way to nab the support of a million Jakarta citizens to allow him to run as an independent,” Yunarto said.
The main reason behind Basuki’s high electability appeared to be the public's high satisfaction level for his administration, which reached 82.8 percent in the survey.
The survey — independently funded by the think tank — employed multistage random sampling with a 4.9 percent margin of error.
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