Susilo looks set to win presidency, opinion polls say

Susilo looks set to win presidency, opinion polls say

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

With the election runoff only four days away, two opinion polls
showed on Wednesday that Megawati Soekarnoputri would not catch
up with candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono who was predicted to
win the election with a landslide victory.

In its latest opinion poll, the Washington-based pollster
International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) said that
61.2 percent of respondents would vote for Susilo in the runoff,
against Megawati who was favored by only 29.3 percent of
respondents.

"The respondents would vote for Susilo largely because of his
clean image and good personality," the survey said.

The level of approval for Susilo had dropped slightly from
that of the previous survey in which 62.4 percent of respondents
would vote for him, while Megawati's ratings improved from 28.5
percent to 29.3 percent.

In its latest "tracking" survey, IFES interviewed 2,000
respondents in the country's 32 provinces between Sept. 2 and
Sept. 9. The margin of error is 2.2 percent.

The survey also revealed that little would change in the
electorates' preference as over 86 percent of the respondents had
made up their minds who they would vote for in the runoff.

Susilo's chance of winning the runoff was also boosted by the
trend among voters whose candidates had been eliminated in the
first round to vote for the Democratic Party-nominated candidate.

"Three-quarters of respondents of Golkar Party candidate
Wiranto stated that they intended to vote for Susilo and his
running mate Jusuf Kalla in the runoff. The figures for Amien
Rais and Hamzah Haz' supporters who moved their support to Susilo
are 41.7 percent and 70.9 percent, respectively," the survey
said.

Despite the optimistic prediction for Susilo, IFES project
manager Alan Wall said that the survey result represented the
conditions when the opinion poll was fielded. "There is still a
lot of room for changes," he said.

Separately on Wednesday, the Jakarta-based pollster, the
Indonesian Survey Institute (LSI) drew a similar picture of the
Sept. 20 runoff.

In its latest survey, covering 1,200 respondents in all 32
provinces from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12, the LSI discovered that 61.3
percent of respondents favored Susilo, as opposed to 32.7 percent
who would vote for Megawati.

The margin of error is 3 percent.

The survey, which was fielded the day after Thursday's bomb
attack in front of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, also found
that the terrorist attack had slightly impaired Megawati's
standing.

"Megawati would have gained more from the efforts of the
Nationhood Coalition if the terrorist attack had not occurred,"
the survey said.

Megawati's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P),
Golkar Party and a number of minor parties formed a coalition in
mid-August to support her election bid.

Megawati-Hasyim Muzadi campaign team member Ahmad Bagja
questioned the validity of the survey, saying that it did not
represent the real condition of the country's electorates.

"Scores of opinion polls are nothing but a disguised campaign
to boost the image of our rival," he told the Post, adding that
according to the team's estimate Megawati would win the election
with up to 60 percent of the vote.