Many Citizens Want Main Political Parties to Prioritize Their Own Cadres in Regional Elections

The political configuration in the 2024 Regional Head Elections (Pilkada) remains dynamic. Some political parties have already nominated candidates, while others have yet to declare their support.

However, the public believes political parties would be better off nominating their own cadres in the Pilkada.

This is in line with the results of a Kompas Research and Development (Litbang Kompas) survey, which showed that 65.4% of respondents prefer political parties to nominate their own cadres.

Meanwhile, 27.1% of respondents believe that political parties should prioritize non-cadre candidates, while 7.5% responded "don't know."

“This attitude is certainly inseparable from the phenomenon of many figures nominated by political parties in the Pilkada who are not actually internal cadres of those parties,” wrote a Litbang Kompas researcher in their report on Monday (August 19, 2024).

The Litbang Kompas report details three aspects that underlie political parties nominating non-cadre candidates for the Pilkada. First, the candidate's popularity and electability.

Second, there is no requirement for regional head or deputy regional head candidates to be members of a political party. Finally, the requirement to nominate a candidate pair in the Pilkada with a minimum of 20% of legislative seats or 25% of the election vote significantly limits the party's ability to nominate its own cadres.

“Looking at the experience of previous presidential elections and Pilkada, figures who are not party cadres have often secured nominations and competed in the political contest,” wrote the Litbang Kompas researcher.

The Litbang Kompas survey involved 534 respondents from 38 provinces, randomly selected from the Litbang Kompas panel, in proportion to the population of each province.

Data collection was conducted from June 18-20 through telephone interviews. The survey's margin of error is approximately 4.22% with a 95% confidence level, under conditions of simple random sampling.