22 | FORBES INDONESIA AUGUST 2017
GUEST COLUMN PERRY NAGLE
Anies Baswedan (Center) holds the hand of Gerindra party chief Prabowo Subianto (Right)
as Baswedan running mate Sandiaga Uno (Left) talks to reporters after voting in the Jakarta
governor election in Jakartadata held true in reality. By March
2016, Sandi had already visited most
of Jakarta’s 267 kelurahan (neighbor-
hoods) and he was proposing to start
over again from the beginning. Even
for young, fit candidates like Sandi
and Anies, campaigns are physically
exhausting. Many candidates can only
manage three events per week, while
Sandi was averaging seven per day.
When Anies joined the ticket, he be-
gan his own aggressive event sched-
ule, with a specific focus on reaching
all of Jakarta’s diverse ethnic and reli-
gious groups. By February 2017, Anies
and Sandi had together conducted
over 1,100 events, an unprecedented
number by any standard.
Message control was another key
metric. Most of the seven million
voters in Jakarta were not paying at-
tention until a few months before the
vote. Both Sandi and Anies stayed on
message. By late 2016, reporters be-
gan complaining that their campaign
was “like a broken record” because
they only talked about jobs, cost-of-
living and education—considered a
victory in message control.
Throughout 2016 Sandi’s elect-ability slowly began to rise, reaching
20% by mid-year. During this period,
the incumbent stumbled, facing at-
tacks on his tough policy on evic-
tions and alleged fraud in a hospital
project. The incumbent then aggres-
sively counterattacked—something
the voters disliked. We believe these
counterattacks reinforced his weak-
ness and eroded his support. Simul-
taneously, Sandi stayed focused on
issues voters cared about. By Septem-
ber 2016, the incumbent’s electability
had dropped from 65% to 52%, even
before the religious issue erupted.
Meanwhile, Sandi’s electability had
grown from 0.4% to 30%.
Anies brought advantages when
he joined the top of the ticket in late
September 2016. Anies had strong
name recognition and electability, ac-
cording to polls. He had recognized
competence in education and nation-
al-level governing experience. The in-
cumbent’s blasphemy case started in
October 2016 and dominated the me-
dia. It’s unclear how much the case
contributed to the incumbent’s drop
from 52% electability in September
to 42% by the runoff. Religious issuesclearly had an impact, but I would
argue less than was commonly as-
sumed. The incumbent was already
losing support before October 2016.
In the blasphemy case, he reacted
with customary ferocity.
This pattern was to repeat itself
many times in the lead up to the first
round of the election, which was a
three-way race, culminating in vi-
cious personal attacks between the
incumbent and the third candidate
(and his father, former President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono). With
his attacks, the incumbent not only
highlighted his greatest weakness,
but also most likely lost the support
of the third candidate’s voters in the
second round. Perhaps Ahok believed
he could win in the first round by
reaching 51%—a gamble that did not
pay off. The first round vote was: 43%
for Ahok, 40% for Anies and Sandi,
and 17% for the third candidate. In
the second (and final) round, near-
ly all of the third candidate’s voters
moved to Anies and Sandi, largely ac-
counting for their 16 point win.
Sandi started from 0.4% electabil-
ity in early 2016 and was joined by
Anies later that year. Together they
took their combined ticket to a land-
slide 16-point victory over a strong
incumbent one year later. These re-
markable numbers are the result of
a well-run campaign with long-term
planning, the latest data analytics
techniques to identify key economic
messages, strong message control, sig-
nificant and early TV spending, and
an unprecedented voter outreach pro-
gram with over 1,100 campaign events.
Indonesia should come to terms
with the extremism and anger stirred
up by this election. But if we look be-
hind the heated rhetoric and head-
lines, we will see, for the most part,
voters voting based on economic self-
interest. If we look closer still, we will
see that Anies and Sandi have run the
first modern, data driven campaign inIndonesia’s history. F (^) REUTERS