February 15, 2024
JAKARTA – Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto has a strong lead in the race for the presidency, preliminary results from pollsters suggested on Wednesday after polls closed.
Official results are not due until next month, but at least two independent pollsters who collected a sample of votes at polling stations for so-called “quick counts” put Prabowo at more than 55 percent, with nearly two thirds of the vote sample counted.
Pollster Poltracking showed him at 59.53 percent in the preliminary count and Cyrus Network-CSIS had him at 58.27 percent as of 5 p.m. Litbang Kompas recorded the Gerindra Party chairman garnering 58.82 percent.
Prabowo needs to claim more than 50 percent of the overall vote and at least a fifth of ballots cast in over half the country’s 38 provinces to secure the presidency over his rivals Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo.
“The hope is to win,” Prabowo told reporters earlier in the day before voting in Bogor, West Java.
The 72-year-old, a military chief during the Suharto dictatorship a generation ago, was scheduled to address supporters on Wednesday evening as he bids to replace popular outgoing president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who observers claim indirectly supported his campaign.
The vote across 800,000 polling stations began in Papua and ended at 1 p.m. at the other end of the country in Sumatra, while some stations in Jakarta remained open after the capital was inundated by thunderstorms.
The “quick counts” have been used in previous elections by candidates to claim victory.
Nearly 205 million people were eligible to vote in the fifth presidential election since the end of Soeharto’s dictatorship in 1998.
A logistical feat in which more than 20,000 seats were up for grabs saw planes, helicopters, speedboats and even cows used to cart ballots around the archipelago of nearly 280 million people.
In Papua’s Timika city, officials inspected makeshift polling stations built from logs, metal sheets and palm leaves as voters arrived to eye candidate lists.
In the capital Jakarta, a thunderstorm inundated 34 polling stations, according to the city’s disaster mitigation agency.
General Elections Commission (KPU) commissioner Yulianto Sudrajat told AFP that polling stations that opened late because of bad weather could stay open longer, given the “extenuating circumstances”.
Responding to the preliminary results, Ganjar said on Wednesday that his team would “wait for election results”.
Anies said it was too early to conclude the outcome of the race and asked the public to wait for the official result from the poll body.