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.