September 29, 2023
JAKARTA – Presidential hopeful Prabowo Subianto leads the race among university students, whose political preferences are largely influenced by off-campus student groups, indicating the large influence these organizations have on young people, a recent survey has found.
The survey was carried out by the Research Center for Politics and Government (PolGov), a research body under the Gadjah Mada University’s (UGM) School of Social and Political Science, and examined 719 students across 31 universities in 29 provinces, many of whom were first-time voters.
Prabowo was at the top, with 17.92 percent of those surveyed between July 24 and Aug. 7 responding that they would vote for him.
He was followed by Ganjar Pranowo, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) presidential nominee, with 13.96 percent. Opposition figurehead Anies Baswedan was in the last place with just over 10 percent.
The majority of respondents, however, said they either had yet to decide or preferred not to disclose the information.
PolGov also ran a simulation that only accounted for presidential preferences based on the respondents’ familiarity with each presumptive candidate.
Prabowo still came out on top of Ganjar, with 30.19 compared with Ganjar’s 30 percent. Anies still languished in third in the simulation, garnering 20.38 percent.
Organizational influence
A closer look at the survey revealed that student preferences were split when considering the university student groups they joined. Each organization’s ideologies influenced student presidential preferences, according to PolGov researcher Arya Budi.
“Other surveys failed to capture how [students’] affiliations with these groups affected their preferences,” Arya said when presenting the survey’s result on Tuesday.
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UGM’s research center found that Anies was most popular among active members of the Association of Muslim Students (HMI), Indonesia’s largest Muslim student organization, of which Anies is a former member. The former Jakarta governor scored an electability rating of 38 percent among HMI members while Prabowo and Ganjar only scored 26 and 14 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, respondents who were members of the Indonesian Islamic Student Movement (PMII) were split equally between Ganjar and Prabowo, both of whom had an electability rating of 33 percent. The PMII is known for its emphasis on more traditionalist Muslim values and its association with Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the country’s largest Muslim organization.
Anies’ lackluster electability in this group, according to Arya, could be attributed to the fact that the survey was done before Anies named Muhaimin Iskandar, a renowned alumnus of PMII and chair of the National Awakening Party (PKB), as his running mate.
Prabowo was the most popular among members of the Muhammadiyah Student Association (IMM), scoring 42 percent in the survey compared with Ganjar and Anies, both with 28 percent.
Respondents who were part of the Indonesian National Student Movement (GMNI) preferred Ganjar, with the former Central Java governor scoring 52 percent, following by Prabowo, with 29 percent, and Anies, with 5 percent.
The GMNI is known for its nationalist branding and its ideology is more aligned with the PDI-P than with other political parties.
Job concerns
A common denominator among the youth respondents were their concerns over the job market, regardless of their political and candidate preferences. Nearly half of the respondents identified “opportunities for work” as the most pressing issue they hoped presidential aspirants would address.
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Nearly 6 out of 10 respondents added that issues surrounding the job market were still underrepresented in electoral discourse among presidential candidates and political parties.
More than half of the entire voter roll, 106 million people, are under the age of 40, according to data from the General Election Commission (KPU), with 22 percent of all voters part of Generation Z, meaning that they were born in the late 1990s or later.
Prabowo, Ganjar and Anies have all taken their unofficial presidential campaigns to several campuses in the country in a bid to win the hearts of young voters, including at UGM last week, when all three presumptive presidential nominees participated in a discussion hosted by journalist Najwa Shihab.