Quick counts suggest victory for Susilo

Quick counts suggest victory for Susilo

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Two quick counts predicted on Monday that Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono and running mate Jusuf Kalla will emerge the winners of
the final round of the country's first direct presidential
election.

A quick count by the Institute of Research, Education and
Information of Social and Economic Affairs (LP3ES) suggested that
the Susilo-Kalla pair garnered 61.2 percent of the vote against
the 38.8 percent collected by Megawati Soekarnoputri and running
mate Hasyim Muzadi.

The survey has a 1.1 percentage point margin of error and a 95
percent confidence level.

Another quick count, made jointly by the Polling Center and
the Indonesia Media Technologies, predicted a similar result in
the presidential election runoff.

In its quick count announced on Monday, the Polling Center
said that Susilo had 60.21 percent of the vote as opposed to
Megawati's 39.79 percent.

LP3ES, which conducted its quick count in collaboration with
Washington's National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the U.S.
Agency for International Development (USAID), based its findings
on actual observation of vote counting at 1,362 polling stations,
representing the votes of 283,442 voters.

The institute's quick count results in the first round of
presidential election in July said that Susilo and Megawati came
first and second with 33.9 percent and 24.9 percent of the vote
respectively.

In the manual vote count by the General Elections Commission,
Susilo got 33.2 percent of the vote, while Megawati garnered
26.68 percent of the vote.

LP3ES chief researcher Muhammad Husain said that although the
survey reflected partial results of only 68 percent of the vote
at 2,000 selected polling stations, the likelihood of a
significant change in figures was small.

"Even though the figures can still change, it will not change
significantly. The margin is over 20 percent," Husain said in a
press briefing here.

The quick count is expected to wrap up on Tuesday, when votes
from the selected 2,000 polling stations were aggregated.

Husain also said that although votes for Megawati could still
increase, it would not alter the final result and that the
likelihood of her catching up with Susilo was small.

"In Central Java province, where we collected most of our
data, the increase for Megawati will not exceed one percentage
point," he said.

LP3ES is expected to announce the final result of the quick
count later on Tuesday.

Among other provinces, Central Java was one of Megawati's
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) strongholds. PDI-
P garnered the most votes in the April 5 legislative election.
Megawati came first in the first round of the presidential
election.

The survey also said that voter turnout reach a staggering 80
percent.

The Polling Center said it had collected data on vote counting
from over 4,000 polling stations in 2,000 villages involving over
2,000 observers for its survey.

Researcher Yatna Putra Yadi of the Polling Center said that
Megawati took the leading position only in provinces like Bali,
Maluku, West Kalimantan and South Sumatra.

KPU chairman Nazaruddin Sjamsuddin said the commission was not
responsible for publication of the quick count.

"The official result will be that of the manual count, which
will be announced on Oct. 5," he said.