Quick count, anxious voters' new reference

Quick count, anxious voters' new reference

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In the midst of a fairly slow manual vote count used by the
General Elections Commission (KPU), voters who are anxious to
know the final result of an election have the so-called "quick
count" to thank.

Developed for the Indonesian context by the Institute of
Research, Education and Information of Social and Economic
Affairs (LP3ES) in 1997, not only has the quick count displayed
acceptable precision in predicting the final result of the polls,
it also delivers the result in just a few hours after voting
concludes.

In the first round of the presidential election in July, the
quick count, jointly carried out by LP3ES and the Washington-
based National Democratic Institute (NDI), extrapolated their
samples from across the country and determined that Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono would emerge on top with 33.9 percent of the
vote, while Megawati Soekarnoputri would likely get some 24.9
percent of the vote.

The KPU's official result placed Susilo on top with 33.2
percent and Megawati second with 26.6 percent of the vote.

The result of quick count was based on actual observation by
observers at selected polling stations across the country.

In Monday's runoff election, LP3ES was able to monitor 2,000
polling stations. It said Susilo would win the presidency with
60.2 percent of the vote.

Sample determination plays a significant role in the quick
count, as it will affect the validity of the data collected.

Because a polling station serves as the only unit of analysis
in a quick count, the polling station surveyed will be determined
only after the election organizers release the complete list of
the stations.

As voters are mostly distributed in Java, quick counts will
proportionately draw more of a sample from polling stations on
the island, and less from sparsely populated provinces like
Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam or East Nusa Tenggara.

The sample determination must also take into account urban and
rural voters. The result will be flawed if it ignores any of
these key factors.

"One quick count conducted by another association in the first
round of the presidential election predicted that Amien Rais
would end up second, while Wiranto would finish fourth. The
results were inaccurate because its samples only comprised urban
voters," LP3ES researcher Tatak Prapti Ujiyati told The Jakarta
Post, without naming the association.