Insignificant “Coattail” Effect Ramlan Surbakti
If members of the House of Representatives are elected simultaneously as the presidential election, which chosen members of the House will be influenced by the elected president. It means that if a voter gives his or her vote to the X pair as president and vice president, in the legislative election, the voter will give the vote to the party/legislative candidate who supported the nomination of the X pair.
Nearly all voters follow and got to know the presidential candidates because the number of the presidential candidates is limited and all candidates carry out campaigns throughout the region and broadcast by all television stations, reported in all newspapers, news magazines and the internet. Therefore, most voters are able to make better choices about the presidential candidate they vote for than the legislative candidate they punch the ballot hole for.
Choosing a party/legislative candidate is more difficult because they are many in number but they do not carry out a comprehensive election campaign. Therefore, the party/legislative candidate to be chosen is influenced by the presidential candidate being supported, in which the voter will vote for the party/legislative candidate who supports the nomination of the presidential candidate who is chosen. Such a mechanism for determining choices is called a coattail effect.
Because in the 2019 simultaneous elections, both the president and the legislative members were elected on the same day/date and polling station (TPS), even on the presidential election ballot the pictures of the parties that supported the nomination of the presidential candidate was placed under the photo of the presidential and vice presidential candidate pairs, the question to be answered in this paper is whether the political parties received additional votes for nominating a particular presidential and vice presidential candidate pair?
From the results of the 2019 legislative election determined by the KPU on 21 May 2019 (before the Constitutional Court\'s decision on general election result disputes), it turned out that PDI-P only recorded a very small increase (0.38 percent) in the 2019 legislative election compared with the results of the 2014 legislative election.
Likewise, the Gerindra Party only generated a very small increase (0.76 percent) in the 2019 legislative election compared to the results of the 2014 legislative election.
The Jokowi-Amin pair supporting parties that gained the highest increase of votes was NasDem with 2.33 percent, while the party supporting the Prabowo-Sandi pair that experienced the highest increase was the PKS with 1.42 percent. Even though NasDem aggressively supported Jokowi (one of the themes of the NasDem campaign: "NasDem is Jokowi and Jokowi is NasDem"), it is difficult to ascertain whether the increase in NasDem votes occurred solely because of supporting the nomination of the Jokowi-Amin pair, because NasDem via Metro TV together with every NasDem candidate intensively carried out the campaign.
Not significant
The number of votes obtained by 10 political parties in the election of House members in the 2019 elections, which officially supported the Jokowi-Amin pair, reached 62.01 percent, while the number of votes obtained by the Jokowi-Amin pair in the presidential election reached 55.50 percent. It means there were 6.51 percent of the 10 party voters supporting the pair number 01 (Jokowi-Amin), who chose the pair number 02 (Prabowo-Sandi).
The number of votes obtained by the six parties supporting the Prabowo-Sandi pair in the legislative election reached 37.98 percent, while the number of votes obtained by Prabowo-Sandi in the presidential election reached 44.50 percent. It could be predicted here that a small number of party voters who backed up the Prabowo-Sandi pair, especially PAN and the Democratic Party, voted for the Jokowi-Amin pair.
If all voters of the six parties supporting the Prabowo-Sandi pair gave their votes to the number 02 pair, then there would be an additional 6.52 percent of votes to be obtained by the pair number 02 from the voters of 10 parties supporting Jokowi-Amin.
Ten parties supporting the Jokowi-Amin pair lost 6.51 percent of the votes to the pair number 02, while the six parties supporting the Prabowo-Sandi pair received an additional 6.52 percent from the voters of the 10 parties supporting the pair number 01. In general it can be concluded that most voters of the parties supporting the candidate pair number 01 voted for the pair number 01. Likewise most voters of the parties which supported the candidate pair number 02 voted for the pair number 02.
In short, the "tail of the suit" did not give significant influence. Possibly, there are two contributing factors. First, an open proportional electoral system centered on the candidate pair which was used to elect members of the DPR.
The open proportional electoral system, which was used to elect members of the DPR places legislative candidates as participants of the election, in the sense that the candidates themselves were the most active in carrying out all forms of campaigns to get votes. As many as 7,968 legislative candidates from 16 political parties participating in the election tried with all possible means of campaigning to get votes from voters.
Those who campaigned door-to-door were not the candidates, but field operators; the materials delivered to voters\' house were not the vision, mission, and program of the presidential and vice presidential candidates supported by their party or the party\'s vision, mission and program but the candidates\' messages.
Face-to-face meetings between the candidates/field operators were not in the form of dialogues (for example, the voters conveyed hope, while the candidates gave a response), but there was a kind of exchange between the candidates/operators who provided money and/or basic materials to the voters who would vote. In short, most of the 7,968 candidates for the House of Representatives did not talk about supporting the presidential candidates, but talked about themselves to be elected.
Second, the political parties participating in the election did not play a role as election participants in the sense of conducting an election campaign to deliver the public policy plan that would be fought for and conducting an election campaign to support the presidential and vice presidential pairs they supported.
When committed to supporting a presidential and vice presidential pair, each political party participating in the election should support the candidate pair\'s vision, mission and programs, both contained in the party\'s vision, mission and programs or in the implementation of an election campaign carried out by the party institutions or by the candidates.
The party institutions not only lost the spirit, principles and characteristics of their party but also had not campaigned in 2019 simultaneous elections. Actually, Law Number 7 of 2017 concerning elections orders the General Elections Commission (KPU) to facilitate (with state budget funds) political parties participating in the elections (not facilitate the candidates ), in the form of procurement and installation of campaign props and the advertisement of election campaigns through TV.
Not a consideration
In the 2019 elections, the KPU facilitated, but the political parties participating in the election did not take the opportunity to optimally convey the principles and characteristics of the parties in the form of the public policy plans to be fought for.
Political parties as institutions hardly appeared in the 2019 elections, simply because political parties were "drowned" by the presidential election and because political parties were "happy" to let candidates take over the full role of election participants.
Therefore, it seems that political parties were increasingly becoming a consideration for the voters in voting to elect members of the DPR or elect a president. That was so if most of the voters of the 10 parties supporting Jokowi-Amin voted for the pair number 01 not because of the party/candidate chosen but because of the figures of Jokowi-Amin. Also, if most of the voters of the six party supporting the pair number 02 voted for Prabowo-Sandi not because of the party/candidate chosen, but because of the figures of Prabowo-Sandi.
Ramlan Surbakti, Professor of Comparative Politics, Airlangga University, Surabaya; member, Indonesian Academy of Sciences