An analysis of the 2019 Indonesian legislative election

7 min readMar 27, 2024

Results map of the election by me (See full image here)

This is an edited archive of a Twitter thread I posted on February 4, 2024, ten days before the general election of that year. Quoted by that thread was another explaining the country’s current electoral system using a hypothetical scenario. All images presented here were made by yours truly.

The political field in a nutshell

Though long gone, authoritarian Suharto’s regime has left notable marks to Indonesia’s political system to this day; relevant to this article are sole adherence to the state ideology of Pancasila coupled with visceral anti-communism and legislative decisions taken with consensus. As Robertus Robet from the University of Melbourne explains in his article about “The Indonesian presidential cult”:

“[There is] the absence of parties built around ideologies or class interests. Nowadays, there are only two types of parties in Indonesia, core parties, like PDIP and Golkar, and personalistic parties, like [Demokrat] (Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono) and Gerindra (Prabowo Subianto). These personalistic parties are founded purely to help a particular political figure become president.”

This “absence of parties built around ideologies or class interests” that he described, and have been sustained since Suharto’s New Order, left the field wide open for personalities built on name recognition, and a “depoliticised” electorate often starved from concrete policies.

Open list and the noken system

Map of the proportion of candidate votes by electoral district in 2019

Indonesia’s open list provides voters an option to vote for a party or a candidate, which also counts as a vote for their party list. Note that independent candidacies are not allowed, and parties need to maintain an active presence in all provinces to run. People in the outer islands are more likely to choose the latter and vote for a candidate, likely the local figure that they recognise and trust the most. This indicates very low identification with any party, which “elites” tend to be labelled “Java-centric”.

Results for each party above the 4% electoral threshold by municipality in 2019 (full image here)

Those candidates are not spread evenly by party, however. You might notice that parties like Golkar and Nasdem are spottier, so to speak. The support of these so-called “mass parties” are buoyed by the popularity of local candidates (eg. mayors, oligarchs, and celebrities alike), as opposed to “cadre parties”, namely PDI-P and PKS which have a sustained base of support in which to appeal to; the former Central & East Javans and non-Muslims, the latter Muslims in cities.

I also want to note why I felt the need to mark down municipalities which saw the usage of the noken system. In it, the “big man” of a tribe would essentially vote on behalf of his people, resulting in wacky landslides for a party, and literally zero votes for most. At least 5 municipalities which used this system even voted for Jokowi in 2019 by 100%. (!!!)

Open list races

It might be incomplete to discuss open-list PR without bringing up the intra-party contests to get however many seats a party will get in each districts after fighting it with other parties. For American and Argentinian readers, this could probably be analogised to similar to an “open primary”, except held concurrently with the “general” election. Obviously I can’t map every single one, so I’ll just do with some that might be notable or indicative of others like it. Disclaimer that I do not endorse or condemn the candidates or parties that I cover.

In Central Java VII, Bambang Soesatyo has served as Golkar’s only representative since 2009. Former speaker of the House and now speaker of the bicameral parliament, he could be safe in knowing he’ll stay that way as Golkar’s only had 1 seat since the district was created in 2004.

Another Central Java district, the fifth, is fertile ground for the PDI-P and especially Puan Maharani, the current speaker of the House, granddaughter of former president Sukarno, and daughter of party leader Megawati Sukarnoputri. Her coattails, as well as those of Aria Bima, another high-profile PDI-P official and member since 2004, were enough to give PDI-P another two seats, the last one won by just 27 votes.

Having served since 2014, Hasan Aminudin was Regent of Probolinggo for two terms before running for the legislature in the East Java II district. He had enough votes to carry Aminurokhman, a former mayor of Pasuruan, over the finish line. Hasan was arrested in 2021 for a corruption case along with his wife which succeeded him as regent. His seat was then voided and awarded to the one with the next-most number of votes, Haerul Amri.

Incumbency is not always a golden ticket, however. A one-term incumbent, Muslim Ayub was defeated by Nazaruddin Dek Gam, owner of a football club in Banda Aceh, to be PAN’s representative in Aceh I. The amount of candidate votes was enough to propel the party into first here.

This was originally going to be another talk about regionalism, but then I noticed that all men on PDI-P’s ticket won and all women lost. Indeed, Bali is only one of four provinces with no female representation in both the lower and upper house. It’s also sus that there are only exactly 3 women in PDI-P & Golkar’s. Maybe, maybe, it’s as if they’re conspiring to barely meet the 30% female quota, while PDI-P receives the maximum number of seats possible without electing women. Who knows?

Ballot placement

The performance of every DPR candidates by their placement on the ballot and the number of seats in a district

You might have noticed already that candidates on the top of the ballot tend to do better than those further down. Indeed, if we aggregate votes from all districts, you can see that placing first (orange) on the ballot usually has quite an advantage over any other candidates in vote share. What interests me the most is that, save for the only 5-seats district, the vote share of the top candidate not only gets eaten away by other candidates (right), but also by the party-only vote (left). My wild guess is that voters get confused with more candidates and just vote for a party.

It’s also worth noting that it’s difficult to figure out how many people voted for candidates on the top simply because they are on the top, or if it’s merely a reflection that those candidates tend to be more well-established on their party and have more access to campaign resources. Remember, unlike the ballot number for presidential candidates and parties which are assigned by the Electoral Commission (KPU), the list is submitted by the parties themselves.

Should you even care about the list?

If it’s all about the candidates then, they must influence the parties significantly, right? Well first, party caucuses officially vote for or against legislation, not the representatives individually. Second, and most jarringly, whether they’re a member at all depends on their party affiliation. Article 239 of Act no. 17/2014 specifies that a member can be dismissed because they’ve been dismissed as a party member or joined another party. Sure, the reason for dismissal can be because they’ve been indicted for corruption, as mentioned above, but the party doesn’t have to give a reason at all. This gives parties enormous power to whip their members into line like nowhere else I know of. One egregious example was when Yusid Toyib was replaced by his Gerindra party only months after he had been elected and before he was even due to be sworn in.

Where do we go from here?

Let’s take an example of my home district.

In 2019, PKS snatched a second seat from PDI-P in West Java I, with Teddy Setiadi, then a city councillor, elected along with one-term incumbent Ledia Hanifa. It seems that PKS might be worried that Teddy’s few candidate votes might not be enough to keep them that seat. Either way, he’s relegated to fourth on the ballot in 2024; now in second is Haru Suandharu, PKS’s leader in the provincial legislature.

Seeing their rising numbers in the polls, Gerindra is eager to recruit a celebrity candidate in the top of the ticket: Melly Goeslaw. With incumbent Sodik Mudjahid placed second, they’re betting on getting a second seat on Goeslaw’s cottails. Not to miss on the action, PDI-P has Marcell Siahaan on their ticket, an actor and singer. The incumbent since 2014, Nico Siahaan (no relation) funnily enough was also an actor. In fact, by my count, 3 of the district’s current representatives had been an actor.