A recent survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) shows that presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto enjoys a significant lead over his rivals if he chooses Minister of State-Owned Enterprises Erick Thohir as his running mate.
In a closed simulation of three candidate pairs, Prabowo-Erick Thohir garnered 38% of respondents' support, while Ganjar Pranowo-Mahfud MD received 32.3%, and Anies-Muhaimin 22.9%. Only 6.9% responded "don't know" or "didn't answer."
LSI Executive Director Djayadi Hanan also stated that, generally, regardless of his running mate, Prabowo tends to have a slight advantage over Ganjar-Mahfud MD and Anies-Muhaimin.
"But his lead is quite significant if Prabowo chooses Erick as his running mate, based on this simulation data," Djayadi said in an online press conference on LSI's YouTube channel on Thursday (19/10/2023).
Besides Erick Thohir, the LSI survey also simulated pairings of Prabowo with East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa, and Solo Mayor Gibran Rakabuming Raka.
In the simulation pairing Prabowo with Khofifah, their support reached 36.3%, while Ganjar-Mahfud received 33%, Anies-Muhaimin 23.4%, and 7.3% responded "don't know" or "didn't answer."
Meanwhile, Prabowo-Gibran garnered 36% support, followed by Ganjar-Mahfud at 33.1%, Anies-Muhaimin at 23.5%, and 7.4% responding "don't know" or "didn't answer."
"However, it's important to understand that we haven't yet considered public reaction to the Constitutional Court's decision on October 16, 2023," Djayadi added.
The survey was conducted from October 2-8, 2023, involving 1,620 respondents, representing the demographic spread of the population across Indonesia. Respondents were Indonesian citizens aged 17 and above with voting rights.
Respondents were interviewed face-to-face by trained interviewers. The sample was drawn using a multistage random sampling method with a margin of error of approximately 2.5% at a 95% confidence level.