During a ceremony to celebrate the 8th anniversary of the United Indonesia Party (Perindo) in Jakarta, Jokowi’s remarks came as a response to Perindo Chair Hary Tanoesoedibjo’s opening speech, in which he described the President as a successful politician who has never lost an election. But Jokowi was quick to console his former opponent, “Maybe your turn (Prabowo Subianto) will come after this.”

2024 Presidential Election is Shaping up Into a 3-Horse Race

Three key factors will shape the 2024 competition—first, the qualities of the candidates. Second, political parties are dynamically re-positioning themselves for the 2024 elections. The Gerindra Party moved first by nominating Prabowo as its presidential candidate, while non-aligned parties did the same with Anies. The popular incumbent President Jokowi retains a strong say in influencing the Indonesians. He will want to ensure that his successor is willing to preserve his development and reform agenda.

As Indonesia’s fifth-largest political party, NasDem is backing the outgoing Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan. Anies has consistently ranked among the top three possible contenders to lead the world’s third-largest democracy, according to opinion polls. The other two are Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo and Defense Minister and ex-special force general, Prabowo Subianto.

NasDem Chairman Surya Paloh said he had spent months deliberating on the party’s preferred candidate and ultimately decided that Anies was the best choice. Anies accepted the endorsement and said he was ready to “walk together” with the party, which in the 2019 parliamentary election won about 9% of the national vote. At the time NasDem did not pass the required threshold to put forward a candidate alone, meaning it will have to form a coalition with other parties to formally nominate a candidate for 2024.

Anies’ candidacy has created a dilemma for the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), whether to nominate Ganjar Pranowo or Puan Maharani, speaker of Parliament (DPR) and PDI-P Chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri’s daughter. The crux of the choice lies in Ganjar’s high electability, with him coming in only a meager percentage points lower than Anies when younger voters are polled. Puan has the right “royal blood” but not enough pulling power for the voters.

The society had its eyes rolled when billboards advertising famous politicians, such as Puan Maharani and Airlangga Hartarto (the chairman of Golongan Karya/Golkar), lined up on various roads across the country.

These advertisements have stoked further speculation, particularly on whether the PDI-P will nominate the royal Puan or regular PDI-P cadre Ganjar. The latter consistently ranked among the top preferred presidential candidates by pollsters. An experimental study, “The Effect of Presidential Candidates on the Party,” found that if PDI-P propose Ganjar Pranowo, Anies Baswedan, and Prabowo Subianto as the presidential candidates, it would have a positive effect on increasing the party’s electability for the legislative election. On the other hand, nominating Central Committee Chair Puan Maharani would have no impact and even damage the party’s electability.

Indonesia’s election rules require that only parties which won at least 20 percent of the total House of Representatives (DPR) seats or 25 percent of votes in the previous election can nominate presidential candidates. Only PDIP, with 22 per cent of DPR seats, meets this requirement. Nasdem, which has only about 10 per cent of DPR seats, must form a coalition with other parties to formally nominate Anies. It is speculated that Nasdem might form a coalition with two small parties, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 8.7 per cent of DPR seats) and the Democratic Party (PD) with 9.39 per cent of DPR seats), but these two parties have yet to declare their support for Anies formally.

Whoever it is, President Jokowi said that the 2024 presidential and vice presidential candidates must understand macroeconomic and microeconomic issues. According to him, the candidates should be proficient in processing data and be able to implement the policies needed. Jokowi stressed this due to the complex-disruptive problems that Indonesia and other developing countries are facing nowadays and in the future.

Survey Results

Several survey results have colored Indonesia’s political climate related to the 2024 general election. The majority of survey results have a strong signal that the common people’s choice for Indonesia President, especially from many youth voters, are popular names such as Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, and Prabowo Subianto.

A poll by leading media group Kompas found that Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo is the most preferable presidential contender for those who voted for the National Democratic Party (NasDem) rather than the party’s own nominee Anies Baswedan. The same poll indicates that Anies is the least desirable candidate among three leading figures. However, Anies saw his popularity surge toward the end of 2022.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Jakarta has just released the “Youth Voters and the 2024 Election: Post-pandemic Socio-Political Dynamics and Preferences” survey, which shows that what young people want in 2024 is honest and/or non-corrupt leaders (34.8 percent of respondents).

In addition, they also preferred leaders who are populist and simple (15.9 percent), firm and authoritative (12.4 percent), achievers or well-performing when leading (11.6 percent), and have experience in leading (10.1 percent).

CSIS Head of the Department of Politics and Social Change, Arya Fernandes, said the 2024 elections will be a new era. Young people aged 17 to 39 years are predicted to reach 60 percent of the total national voters.

The most recent opinion poll, which focuses on the 2024 electoral outlook of young voters, has revealed that social media darlings and governors such as Ganjar Pranowo of Central Java and Anies Baswedan of Jakarta are young voters’ firm favorite presidential—edging out Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto in a three-horse race.

But, should the election be contested only by the three most popular candidates, one-third of respondents would pick Ganjar, while Anies came in second with an electability rating of 27.5 percent, and Prabowo in last place with 25.7 percent.

The survey, released by the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) on Monday, polled close to 1,200 young voters aged 17 to 39—otherwise known as members of Gen Z and millennials—from August 8 to 13, and had a margin of error of 2.84 percent with a 95 percent confidence level.

The results of the latest telesurvey conducted by the United Data Center Institute (PDB) revealed that 83.8 percent of Jakarta residents are satisfied with the performance of Governor Anies Baswedan and Deputy Governor Riza Patria.

The survey was conducted on September 24-25, 2022, involving 400 respondents. Syarifuddin explained that they were selected by using a proportionate snowball sampling via mobile phone numbers. Its margin of error was approximately 5 percent with a 95 percent confidence level.

In scenarios of two-and three-horse races involving Prabowo, they would instead vote for either Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo or Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan, both 53 years old. Young people aged between 17 and 39, who will make up at least 54 percent of voters in 2024, want a president who can make significant changes. They don’t think 70 years old Prabowo Subianto, despite his huge popularity, is their man.

Prabowo leads in popularity among all public figures touted for the 2024 presidential election, according to the CSIS survey, perhaps unsurprisingly. But being the most popular figure will not necessarily translate into votes, the survey notes.

Meanwhile, Citra Network Nasional (CNN) found that, if a presidential election were held today, 31.2 percent of business actors would vote for Economic Affairs Coordinating Minister Airlangga Hartarto, 21.1 percent for Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, and 10.2 percent for TNI Commander Gen. Andika Perkasa.

Research institute Y-Publica Executive Director Rudi Hartono released survey results showing that the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) continues to lead with 18.4 percent electability, followed by the Democratic Party (11.5 percent), and the Gerindra Party (11.1 percent).

According to, Burhanuddin Muhtadi, Indonesia’s National Democrat (NasDem) Party’s decision to endorse and declare Anies Baswedan as its presidential candidate in October 2022 raised questions about the party’s rationale. NasDem did so a month before it was previously planned; one explanation for the haste could be that NasDem wanted to capitalise on Anies’ popularity before he officially ended his term as Jakarta’s governor.

“A different interpretation is that NasDem’s nomination of Anies for the 2024 presidential election (PE) was a strategic move to protect Anies from ‘criminalisation’. NasDem likely also wants to ride on Anies’ coat-tails to draw in his Islamic supporters’ strongholds in West Java, Banten, and Sumatra. Anies’ nomination gave fresh momentum for supporters of the Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, who like Anies is among the frontrunners in the popularity polls.

Political Elites, Parties, and Volunteers are Still Maneuvering

Since the NasDem Party recently declared Anies Baswedan as its presidential candidate, the Golkar Party might be buckling under the pressure to finalize its candidate too. Though the party previously maintained it would back chairman Airlangga Hartarto’s presidential ambitions, a final decision is yet to be made.

Golkar appeared to have fallen into slight disarray when the party’s advisory council chairman Akbar Tandjung expressed his support for Anies’ presidential bid. Golkar central executive board chairman Ace Hasan Syadzily and other party executives were quick to explain that Akbar was simply congratulating Anies. Ace underlined that the party still insists on nominating Airlangga as a presidential candidate, in accordance with the party’s national congress held in 2019.

However, because Golkar alone did not meet the presidential threshold mandated to make a nomination, it formed one of the earliest electoral alliances under the umbrella of the United Indonesia Coalition (KIB), which includes the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the United Development Party (PPP). But despite being often dubbed as a “Golkar-led coalition”, the party itself still has no internal figure that is strong enough to rival the other frontrunners in the public opinion polls.

As another alternative, National Democratic (NasDem) Party politician Zulfan Lindan said the United States will benefit if either Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) General Andika Perkasa or Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan runs for president.

Andika has close ties to the United States because he frequently engaged with the country to organize joint exercises. While Anies, whom Zulfan dubbed “the United States second golden child,” never visited China or Russia during his Ministerial and Governor tenure.

Meanwhile, China and Russia could be benefit if Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo or House Speaker and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) Central Committee Chair Puan Maharani runs for president, Zulfan said. He also mentioned that Gerindra Chair and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto has close ties with the United States, China, and Russia.

Whatever it might be, we have one year (2023) to look forward to. Besides domestic issues, expect the candidates to copy or improve Jokowi’s internationalist vision. 2045 (Indonesia’s 100 years anniversary) is within our reach, and it is shaping its fundamentals since Jokowi took the power in 2014.

Ordinary People’s Hope

Ordinary Indonesians hope that whoever will be the next Indonesia president, they are expecting a charismatic figure who has the capability to solve fundamental problems in Indonesia such as poverty, unemployment, the batch of foreign debt, the expensive cost of children’s education, and other emerging pandemics.

On top of that, while in the US, we are witnessing how a democratic country can be severely polarized because of rigid or binary views in politics, and also learning from the bad experience such as “cebong vs kampret” of 2014 and 2019 Indonesia general elections, most Indonesians now are hoping for a more peaceful and ‘professional’ political campaigns. The candidates are expected not to profit from distasteful cards, such as gender, identity (tribes and descendants), and religion. We all knew that sensitive issues like these might trigger mass brawl, social disorientation, and social segregation, further jeopardizing the country’s security and political stability.

As a proud country who just hosted a successful G-20 summit very recently, the aspiration and responsibilities to further implementing “Free Active” policy for the world peace is getting bigger. This 2024 Presidential election is a major stress test for the Indonesians, regarding of how ready we are as a mature international community–starting by conducting a rather peaceful political campaigns and selecting the proper figures to better Indonesia performance in the world stage.***