Slow counting in Indonesia

A week and a half ago, when we looked at Indonesia’s election results, I remarked that from here to October (1 October for the legislature, 20 October for president) “seems an extraordinarily long transition period.” It no longer looks so silly, given how long it’s taking to count the votes.

At that point, about half the returns were in for president. As of this morning, it’s still only 77.4%. And the legislature is further back, with only 64.9% counted. Nor is it a matter of counting getting stuck at a particular point, as happens in a number of countries (whether for technical or political reasons); the numbers have been moving steadily upwards, just very slowly.

But what the counting shows is that the sample counts done on election night and widely reported (sometimes, not quite correctly, as “exit polls”) are very accurate. For the winner of the presidential race, General Prabowo Subianto, they gave results ranging from 57.5% to 59.1%; the official count at first showed him running a bit below that, but as it’s progressed he’s climbed slowly to 58.8%.

The same thing has been happening with the legislature. At first some of the party results looked a bit different from the sample count, but they’ve gradually been coming more and more into alignment. Currently all but two of them are within about a quarter of a percentage point of the average of the sample counts. (The two are the National Awakening Party, which is doing a bit better than expected, and the Prosperous Justice Party, which is doing a bit worse, but they’re still within a point.)

For one party it matters a lot, because there’s a 4% threshold for representation: the sample counts for the United Development Party ranged from 3.65% to 4.04%, and at the moment it’s running at the top of that range, on 4.03%, only about 30,000 votes above the threshold (which might sound a lot, but well over a hundred million people voted). If it hangs on, it will again be the ninth party in the legislature and will collect something like twenty seats.

Otherwise there’s not much excitement. The same parties will be represented as last time, and the new president will need to bargain with them to get a majority for his legislation just as his predecessor has.