THE RESULTS was never really in doubt. On April 17th, just hours after polling stations closed, pollsters released preliminary estimates showing that Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo (better known as Jokowi) had won a second term in office. He is thought to have clinched about 55% of the vote, against 45% for his opponent, Prabowo Subianto, a former general. The contest was a replay of the previous race, in 2014, which Jokowi won by a slightly narrower margin. On April 18th the election commission will announce the preliminary result, before an official, certified outcome to be released in May. Its numbers may differ fractionally from those of the pollsters, but the outcome will be the same.
Voters’ enduring support for Jokowi can be partly explained by his sensible policies. Outside a polling station in a village near Jakarta, Suyagina, a housewife, says it is now much easier for her to buy medicines thanks to Jokowi’s expansion of health-insurance coverage. Rachman, a middle-aged voter sporting enormous sunglasses and a crisp white shirt, says the president’s much-needed investment in infrastructure has helped, too. And Jokowi has managed the economy reasonably well, keeping inflation low and growth solid.
But Jokowi’s likely victory is also thanks to cynical politicking. One weakness of his previous campaign was a perceived lack of piety, which put off some voters. Rumours circulating on social media claimed that he was a closet Christian—a potential handicap in the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country. This time Jokowi shielded himself from such accusations by picking a hardline Muslim cleric, Ma’ruf Amin, as his running-mate. The vice-president-elect wants the country to adopt Islamic law and is keen to ban homosexual acts as well as some Muslim sects he considers heretical.
Jokowi has also cosied up to the army to counter Mr Prabowo’s nationalism. He has peppered his inner circle with retired generals and is considering reserving some jobs in the civil service jobs for soldiers. In the fashion of Indonesia’s former strongmen, he has used the police, prosecutors and bureaucrats to make life difficult for his most vocal opponents.
But despite Jokowi’s use of such underhand tactics, his victory still looks likely to be smaller than expected. He was hoping to claim over 60% of the vote—the tally with which his predecessor was re-elected. Opinion polls before the election had given him a 20-percentage-point lead. Experts put the disappointing showing partly down to Mr Prabowo’s strong electoral machine, which helped to turn out wavering supporters.
How Mr Prabowo will respond to another defeat is unclear. In 2014 he cried foul and challenged the result in the constitutional court. He also encouraged his supporters to take to the streets. That could happen again. He has already claimed that his own party’s tally shows him to be the true victor, a finding which is entirely at odds with that of most pollsters. At a press conference outside his house in Jakarta he told supporters to guard ballot boxes, implying that the other side had cheated.
If Mr Prabowo’s supporters do protest against the result, that would blight a well-run election. Coordinating balloting for 187m registered voters across a rugged and sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands is no small feat. Yet voting mostly went smoothly and participants seemed glad of the chance to take part. The biggest source of disruption was confusion over the long list of candidates. Voters were not only picking a president, but a national legislature and provincial, local and municipal assemblies too. That meant many voters had to wrestle with five different ballot papers, some of which were the size of a poster, with hundreds of choices.
The results of races other than the presidential one are still trickling in. It looks as though the make-up of the national parliament will remain much the same. The victors of local battles could take some time to be declared.
Preliminary data also suggest that turnout has jumped by about five percentage points since the 2014 election, to around 80%. That would make it the biggest election ever conducted in a single day, anywhere. That is probably thanks to a concerted campaign to turn out the vote by politicians on both sides. Businesses joined in the effort. Hundreds of them, from cinemas to sushi restaurants, offered discounts to those who had voted and could prove it with an ink-stained finger.
A high turnout may be one of the few things about the election that pleases Jokowi. Both he and his party, PDI-P, fared worse than expected. A heftier victory would have allowed him to sideline his conservative vice-president and the armed forces. And had PDI-P claimed more seats it would have been able to reduce its reliance on its five coalition partners. Jokowi has made compromises to ensure re-election, but failed to consolidate his power as a result. Those compromises may haunt him in his second term.
