Analysts question pollsters' influence ahead of runoff

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The credibility of Washington-based International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) and other independent pollsters have bee questioned ahead of the Sept. 20 election runoff, with analysts saying their opinion polls have been misleading.

Eka Ginting, an information technology expert, said the IFES and other pollsters should explain to the public the inaccurate results of their polls predicting the presidential candidates who would advance to the final round.

"Without any intention to restrict the pollsters' freedom of expression, it would not be ethical if the pollsters ... publicized their survey results in the mass media, because this would certainly influence voters in the runoff," he told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday after a seminar on opinion polls and the presidential election.

He said the results from polls conducted by the IFES and the Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) prior to the April 5 legislative election and the July 5 presidential election had raised confusion among the public, since they proved to be vastly different from the elections' official results.

"From the perspective of scientific methodology, the results of the IFES' and LSI's opinion polls are not accountable, because the sampling of the population was not proportionate nor representative, while the margin of error was very high," he said, but did not elaborate further.

He said the IFES' 14th Survey gave the misleading prediction that Susilo-Kalla would win 43.5 percent of votes and Wiranto- Solahuddin would place second, while Megawati-Hasyim would not make it to the runoff.

He stressed that the IFES was too big an organization to be swayed by any candidate to influence voters through its polls, "so it should explain to the public what was wrong with the methodology it employed in conducting its polls".

Mochtar Pabottingi, a political analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, concurred and said the two institutions' credibility were at stake.

He said the IFES should explain to the public the controversial results of its survey to maintain its credibility and prove its strong commitment to the development of a true democracy in Indonesia.

He added the results of LSI's polls had been widely questioned because a member of the Susilo-Kalla campaign team was at the institute.

"But let the public be the judge. Independent pollsters that publish subjective results of opinion polls will lose their credibility, and the public will not heed them any more," he said.

Mochtar also said the pollsters' controversial results would not be of much influence on voters in the upcoming runoff and thus, the General Elections Commission should not bow to pressure from the government to restrict their activities.