Rematch: Islamic politics, mobilisation, and the Indonesian presidential election

ABSTRACT

Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election brings a rematch between incumbent Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, though against a backdrop of increasingly active conservative Islamic movements. Analyses of this contest – as well as of contemporary Indonesian politics more generally – are often based on assumptions around which constituencies matter and which political factions they support. This paper examines those assumptions using an original dataset of fine-grained returns and census data, including a latent variable to capture the independent effect of Islamic conservatism. We find that conservative Muslim areas overwhelmingly supported Prabowo in 2014, but turned out in relatively low numbers. By contrast, rural poor areas turned out heavily for Widodo. This suggests that the conservative vote was under-mobilised and has a greater electoral potential than previously demonstrated. Given the recent mobilisation by conservative segments in society, observers should be prepared for significant shifts in the Indonesian electorate in 2019 and beyond.Abbreviations: NU: Nahdlatul Ulama; FPI: Islamic Defenders Front

KEYWORDS:

• Indonesia
• election
• Islam
• democracy
• turnout

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Menchik (2016) and Suryadinata (2018) for a comprehensive discussion of Islam and democracy in Indonesia.

2. Jokowi was widely expected to name a younger member from his coalition as running mate. As such, the choice of the elderly Ma’ruf, who has little influence in the legislature, clearly indicated the perceived importance of the conservative Muslim vote. See also Pepinsky (2018).

3. Not all observers, however, attribute Indonesia’s democratic breakdown to radical elements. Menchik (2019) argues that moderate organisations and actors have likewise played a role in that process.

4. Prabowo is widely known to come from a family with religiously diverse – including non-Muslim – members.

5. See the Jakarta Globe article of 12 October 2017 ‘Jokowi Defends Islam, Approval Rating Remains High: Poll’ by Dames Alexander Sinaga and Yustinus Paat Jakarta Globe. http://jakartaglobe.id/news/jokowi-defends-islam-approval-rating-remains-high-poll/.

6. We can compensate for this shortcoming by taking advantage of general population statistics, which are available down to the village level. Unfortunately, calculating turnout based on general population statistics rather than registered voters results in markedly lower turnout figures.

7. The only election rule of relevance is that the winner must earn support of at least 20 percent of voters in over 50 percent of all provinces. Given that both campaigns had broad support across the archipelago, both were well above this threshold.

8. Disparity here refers to the standardised difference between females and males in a particular attribute of interest. With respect to illiteracy, for example, if 10 males and 20 females out of a hundred are illiterate, then female illiteracy differential would be (20−10)/100 = .10.

9. Additionally, our latent variable does a poor job of capturing poor urbanites (who also tend to be more conservative Muslim) since the districts they reside in tend to be of middling poverty as a result of high inequality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dimitar Gueorguiev

Dimitar Gueorguiev is an assistant professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, where he specializes in Chinese Politics, research methods, and political economy.

Kai Ostwald

Kai Ostwald is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia's School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, and the Department of Political Science, where he specializes in the political development of Southeast Asia. He is also the director of UBC's Centre for Southeast Asia Research.

Paul Schuler

Paul Schuler is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Arizona, where he specializes in political institutions and Southeast Asian politics.