Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – A good farmer never blames his tools, but the Golkar Party, winner of the last legislative elections, has raised doubts about the credibility of survey institutes that have published popularity polls placing the party in third place.
Golkar brought into question the integrity of recent surveys by the Indonesian Survey Institute and the Indonesian Survey Circle. Both surveys show the party – which garnered 20.6 percent of national votes in the 2004 elections – had a popularity rating of 13 and 11 percent, respectively.
"Although we have not yet begun campaigning, Golkar can still win 21 percent of votes from our traditional members. How can the surveys come up with such results?" the chairman of the party's team to ensure election victory, Burhanuddin Napitupulu, told a discussion at party headquarters in West Jakarta on Tuesday.
"I really don't believe that the number of voters supporting Golkar has declined as sharply as suggested by the surveys."
Burhanuddin said Golkar had dispatched in July last year more than 15,800 cadres to campaign in all electoral districts across the country. "The survey results appear like they are an 'order' placed by a certain party," he said, without elaborating.
A survey by the Indonesian Survey Institute, held from Dec. 10-22 last year, found that 23 percent of the 2,200 respondents preferred the Democratic Party, compared to 17.1 percent and 13.3 percent who picked the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and Golkar, respectively.
The Reform Institute revealed similar results, with the Democratic party in the lead with 26 percent of respondents, followed by the PDI-P and Golkar with 17.8 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively. In 2004, Golkar won the election with 20.6 percent followed by the PDI-P with 18 percent and the Democratic party with 7 percent.
A survey funded by the Indonesian Political Marketing Research (IPMR), owned by marketing guru Hermawan Kartajaya, found that Golkar was still the top pick among respondents, followed by the PDI-P and the Democratic Party.
The results of the IPMR survey – which involves 16,800 respondents representing all 77 electoral districts in 33 provinces – can be accessed by parties for a fee of Rp 2.2 billion (US$202,765).
Commenting on the large disparity between the survey results, political expert at the University of Indonesia, Andrinof Chaniago, said it was due to different methodologies applied by the pollsters and the number of respondents.
"Many of the survey results do not make sense. For example, how can the PDI-P secure 37 percent of the votes in the recent survey if the party reached its peak with 33 percent in 1999," he said.
Andrinof said surveyors needed to make their mechanisms transparent to the public before announcing results.
General Elections Commission member I Gde Putu Artha said the body was "disturbed" by the boom in the number of pollsters ahead of the legislative and presidential elections. "We need a regulation requiring pollsters to register themselves before conducting election-related surveys," he said.