Rabby Pramudatama, Jakarta – A survey reveals that majority of voters are still undecided about their presidential candidates, two years ahead of the presidential election scheduled for 2014.
The Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) said Thursday undecided voters accounted for 61.6 percent of survey respondents.
Despite the high number of undecided voters, Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party chief patron Prabowo Subianto appeared as the most popular presidential candidate, the survey shows.
The LSI revealed that Prabowo might compete with Megawati Soekarnoputri, the chairwoman of Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Aburizal "Ical" Bakrie, the chairman of Golkar Party in the first round of the presidential election.
"Prabowo might out-play Megawati if he proceeds to the election's second round," LSI researcher Saiful Mujani said during a press conference.
According to the survey, Prabowo would seize 39.1 percent of the vote if he competes against Megawati (29 percent) and Ical (24.2 percent), while 36.7 percent respondents remain indecisive.
Saiful said that Megawati seems succeed to garner most of the vote when the respondents were given options of candidates, however, with only three names: Prabowo, Megawati and Ical, most of the vote would go to Prabowo.
He said that as the field narrows, votes for other candidates tend to shift to Prabowo rather than to Megawati. He added that Aburizal, meanwhile, failed to rival Prabowo's electability even though he has put a lot of effort into promoting himself.
The survey institute said that Prabowo's superiority was also affected by the public's ideal of presidential candidates who possess leadership, integrity and empathy with people.
The LSI queried 2,050 respondents from across the country's 33 provinces from Feb. 1 to Feb. 12. It used a multistage random-sampling method in direct interviews. The approximate margin of error was 2.2 percent.
Prabowo expressed his readiness to run for the president in early of January this year. He said that he aims to garner support from all available parties.
Other candidate names also surge in the survey when the respondents were given semi-open questions with lists of candidate names.
The candidates are: former vice president Jusuf Kalla, who was supported by 7 percent of respondents, followed by Yogyakarta Governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X (4.9 percent) and People's Conscience Party (Hanura) chairman Wiranto (3.9 percent).
Vice President Boediono was supported by 3 percent of survey respondents, followed by NasDem party founder Surya Paloh (2.6 percent) and National Mandate Party chairman Hatta Rajasa (2.2 percent), with 11.5 percent of support was divided among other names, while the remaining 18.2 percent of respondents were undecided.
Last month, a similar survey conducted by the Centre of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) from Jan. 16 to Jan. 26 also tried to gauge the popularity of the potential candidates.