Indonesian Electoral Behaviour: A Statistical Perspective

7 Results of the 1999 Election: District Votes

RESULTS OF THE 1999 ELECTION: DISTRICT VOTES 285 285 7 Results of the 1999 Election District Votes In the previous chapter, we have presented the number and distribution of the votes gained by the seven major parties at the aggregate national and provincial levels. This chapter presents similar information at the district (regency or municipality) level, as reflected in Tables 7.1 to 7.30. This disaggregated information, along with other information presented in the earlier chapters, is the core data set for testing the hypotheses of the existence of religious and ethnic loyalties in Chapter 8. It is also the data set utilized in Chapter 9 to find out the strength of the cultural variables relative to the socio-economic ones. To get a better understanding of the vote composition by party at the district level, we present the data in Figures 7.1 to 7.30. The parties at the district level are arranged in the order of their votes at the provincial level. Using the disaggregated data, we have been able to obtain richer information for over 300 districts.1 The maximum number of votes gained was 2,371 thousand (or 2.3% of the vote) from Bandung regency, West Java, and the minimum number of votes was 2.6 thousand only from the regency of North Aceh, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam. Apart from Bandung regency, there were 12 districts (regencies and municipalities) which contributed more than 1 million votes. As expected, all were located in Java, especially in West Java, the most populous province. They were Bogor, Tangerang, Tasikmalaya, Garut, Sukabumi, and Karawang regencies as well as Bandung municipality. The remaining were located in Jakarta (East Jakarta and South Jakarta 286 INDONESIAN ELECTORAL BEHAVIOUR municipalities) and East Java (Malang and Jember regencies, and Surabaya municipality). The following sections present the votes at the district level for each of the seven largest parties (PDI-P, Golkar, PKB, PPP, PAN, PBB, and PK). These seven parties may not necessarily have been the seven largest parties in a district. Some parties under “others” may have been among the seven largest parties at the district level and hence worth presenting in this chapter. 7.1 PDI-P The 1999 voting results at the district level show that PDI-P ran its strength from the strongest, with 87.0% of the vote, in Tabanan regency, Bali, to the weakest, 0.7%, in Jeneponto regency, South Sulawesi. Across districts, on average, the vote gained by PDI-P was 30.5% and the median vote gained was 32.4%. In terms of size, the maximum number of votes for PDI-P was 821 thousand in Bandung regency, West Java and the minimum was 0.274 thousand, in North Aceh regency, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam. As mentioned in Chapter 6, PDI-P had a tremendous victory in Bali. Let us now have a closer look at the district differences in Bali. As shown in Table 7.16, in all districts PDI-P gained more than 75% of the vote except in Jembrana. The PDI-P in the regency of Jembrana gained 62% while other parties gained a lower percentage of the vote. Golkar, the second largest party, gained 16.3% of the vote. PPP and PKB gained 6.6% and 5.3%, respectively (see Figure 7.16). Outside Bali, there were many districts where PDI-P was the single majority party. Some of them were located in provinces where PDI-P was the winning party and others were located in the provinces where PDI-P did not win. Here are two examples where PDI-P was the winner, but not the single majority in a province. PDI-P was the winner in the province of North Sumatra, but gained only 39.7% of the total vote in the province. However, in this province we find two districts where the PDI-P was the single majority. It gained 67.9% in Karo regency and 50.5% in the Pematang Siantar municipality (see Figure 7.2). The PDI-P was the winner, but not the single majority, in the province of Central Java. It gained 42.8% of the total votes in the province. Nevertheless, as shown in Figure 7.12, it gained more than 50% in some of the districts in this province, namely Sukoharjo (57.7%), RESULTS OF THE 1999 ELECTION: DISTRICT VOTES 287 Karanganyar (56.8%), Wonogiri (56.0%), Klaten (55.6%), Sragen...