Jakarta – Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama and his rival Anies Baswedan are fighting to gain votes from lower-income Jakartans to win the second round of the gubernatorial election, a political researcher said.
The executive director of Charta Politika, Yunarto Wijaya, said that they would focus on winning that segment because the middle- and upper-class voters have already decided who they would choose in the election. "They would fight over the low-income voters," Yunarto said as quoted by kompas.com on Monday.
Based on the exit poll of the first round of the election, Charta Politika found that most of Ahok's voters were educated people who had at least studied in a university. Meanwhile, most of Anies' voters had only graduated from high school or had less education than that.
The people whose salaries were more than Rp 4 million (about US$300) were most likely to vote for Ahok and his running mate Djarot Saiful Hidayat, while the voters with incomes of less than Rp 4 million might favor Anies and Sandiaga Uno, Yunarto said.
Therefore, Ahok's campaign is striving to win the low- and middle-class segment while Anies' team is developing their candidate's popularity among upper-income voters, he said.
To win low-income voters, it was not possible for any of the campaign teams to practice vote buying or utter threats during the campaign, Yunarto said. (cal/wit)