Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Ezra Sihite – Two new surveys are predicting a massive hemorrhaging of votes for the Democratic Party in the 2014 election, painting a bleak scenario in which the ruling party could fail to break double digits.
Umar Bakry, executive director of the National Survey Institute (LSN), said on Monday that a poll of 1,230 respondents, conducted by his organization between Sept. 10 and 24 showed the Democrats "in free fall."
The survey gave the party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono just 5.9 percent of votes if the election were held today, which put it in fourth place overall.
Topping the poll was the Golkar Party with 18.1 percent, followed by the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) with 14.4 percent and the Great Indonesia Movement Party (Gerindra) with 12.5 percent.
The People's Conscience Party (Hanura) was close behind the Democrats with 5.6 percent, followed by the National Democrat Party (NasDem) with 5.1 percent.
The LSN findings come a day after Saiful Mujani Research & Consulting released the results of its own survey of 1,219 respondents, in which Golkar came out on top with 14 percent. The PDI-P was second with 9 percent, followed by the Democrats with 8 percent.
The LSN and SMRC surveys largely corroborate earlier polls that suggest the Democrats are fast losing ground to Golkar and the PDI-P, although they gave the ruling party an unusually low share of votes.
A poll of 1,200 people in June by the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) showed that 20.9 percent of respondents would vote for Golkar, ahead of the PDI-P with 14 percent and the Democrats with 11.3 percent.
"Based on the latest LSN survey, the Democratic Party has plunged into the ranks of mediocre parties," Umar said.
However, he noted that it was not all doom and gloom for the Democrats, who have taken a shellacking from a litany of corruption scandals. Nearly a quarter of respondents abstained from choosing, while 36 percent said they might still change their vote.
"So that means around 60 percent of respondents are swing voters, and this could shake things up in terms of the party rankings," Umar said.
The SMRC survey also highlighted undecided voters as a major factor to be considered, pointing out that they accounted for 50 percent of respondents.
Sutan Bhatoegana, a senior Democrat, acknowledged that the party had been badly buffeted by a string of graft allegations, but stressed that it would perform far better in the actual election than the pollsters were predicting.