Jakarta – A survey published on Tuesday found that the ruling Democratic Party has rebounded from its slump while the Islamic-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) continued to be in the doldrums due to relentless media coverage on scandals involving its politicians.
The survey, conducted by the National Survey Institute (LSN), found that if the legislative election were to take place today, the Democratic Party would get 6.1 percent of the vote, up from 4.3 percent in the pollster's last survey.
For the latest survey, the LSN interviewed 1,230 respondents from all 34 provinces in early May. The number of votes placed the Democratic Party in fifth position, up two notches from the last survey in March.
LSN researcher Dipa Pradipta said that the Democratic Party had benefitted from a lack of media coverage of the Hambalang graft case, which implicated former party chairman Anas Urbaningrum and former youth and sports minister Andi Mallarangeng, also a Democratic Party politician.
The survey also found that the PKS would only get 3.8 percent of the vote, placing it in 10th position out of 12 political parties contesting the 2014 legislative election. In the last survey, the PKS was expected to get 4.6 percent of the vote.
Dipa said that the declining popularity of the PKS was due to intensive media coverage on former chairman Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq, who was alleged to have been involved in the beef import quota bribery case, and his polygamous lifestyle also added to the bad press.
The survey also found the two largest political parties, Golkar and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), came in first and second position with 19.7 percent and 18.3 percent of the vote, respectively.
Based on data from the survey, the LSN also produced a list regarding the political parties that could be deemed as clean.
In the category of clean parties, defined as parties with little or no involvement in graft scandals, the PKS was at the bottom of the list with only 0.6 percent of the respondents who believed that the party was graft-free.
The Democratic Party also appeared near the bottom of the list and received approval from only 0.6 percent of the respondents.
"I think the moral issue is very sensitive for the public. You could imagine how the public feels betrayed by an Islamist party whose politicians are involved in corruption and polygamy," he said.
The survey, which has a margin error of 2.8 percent, also showed that most respondents had lost trust in political parties as the mainstay of democracy.
The LSN found that 53.9 percent of respondents did not trust political parties. More than 35 percent of the respondents were also of the opinion that politicians were involved in graft cases, while 30.6 percent thought that most political parties were oblivious to demands from the public.
More than 10 percent of the respondents thought that political parties were too preoccupied with themselves (koi)