Unofficial Translation
KOMPAS, September 21st 2004
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“Quick Count” Dominate Presidential Candidate’s Popularity
“Yeah! SBY won. Let’s go home; let’s look at the national results in Quick Count. At two o’clock right?” said a person to his friends at polling center number 40, Cikokol, Tangerang.
That afternoon, their happy expressions are so outbursts. The sun doesn’t seem to break their enthusiasm to follow the election process since morning. The result to them for temporary is suited. Their presidential candidate, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Jusuf Kalla, received 203 votes, defeated Megawati Soekarnoputri-Hasyim Muzadi who only elected by 151 people.
No far from location of polling station number 40 Cikokol, still in Tangerang area, different scene happened. Afternoon, the disappointment is dominantly expressed. “Megawati won in here for previous and today’s elections, but Quick Count result in TV in favor of SBY…” said Arifin.
Arifin admitted that he is a Megawati supporter. Actually, at first he was happy because in his area, his choice won. But, Quick Count result that he saw on few television channels that afternoon cause to shed his happiness within second. “What else can you do? Quick Count said that way. Is not possible for my choice to become president in Karawaci,” he said unhappily.
Quick COUNT appeared to be the real star in this Election 2004. Not more than six months this terminology appeared, since legislative election 5 April 2004, this terminology is now become “close to the people.” It has become people’s political vocabulary. More, this method that formerly in general known as Parallel Vote Tabulation has become reference to anyone who is interested to follow the election process.
As described above, the expression of happiness by each presidential candidate’s supporters seemed incomplete if the national vote count is unknown. To wait for official result by the election officials, for example, takes days, even weeks, to be happened. Whose emotion could wait that long watching the number that looks to move slowly.
In a condition like this, Quick Count appears like a “hero” because it is able to give information on the winner of the election contestants in relatively short time period, no more than 24 hours since the election is done. It become more popular than the presidential candidate contested. The results also can be categorized as incredible, not far different with the official result announced by the General Election Commissioner.
In legislative election 5 April 2004, for instance, Quick Count’s Institute for Social and Economic Research, Education & Information (LP3ES) only have the average difference under one percent from the election official result. Also in presidential election 5 July, [they are] able to reduce the precision to 0.5 percent!
Looking at the track record of achievement, not only people who are interested in election, enthusiasm of conducting Quick Count also become greater. If previously there are few organizers such as LP3ES, Rectors Forum and Indonesia Political Science Association (AIPI), now few television stations like RCTI and SCTV are also conducting Quick Count for the election.
The result, until the deadline of this story is written, RCTI Quick Observe (Pantau Cepat) had collected 700 polling stations that show Yudhoyono is winning, [he] received 60 percent, and Megawati 40 percent. SCTV also shows the winning of Yudhoyono with 59,95 percent of votes, while Megawati received 40,05 percent. In addition LP3ES that already collected votes from 1.362 polling stations showed the winning of Yudhoyono 61.2 percent and Megawati 38,8 percent.
The unique is, different than the above-mentioned Quick Count, the Quick Count that is done by TVRI in cooperation with Institute for Social Empowerment and Democracy that was announced in DPP PDI-P office in Lenteng Agung, Jakarta, at 16.00 showed the winning of Megawati-Hasyim pair with the proportion 50,07 percent and Yudhoyono-Jusuf Kalla 49,93!
Quick COUNT, as other statistics practices in politics, is actually not a new thing. In this country it becomes new, even number of political scientists had an opportunity to “worship” it as a product of “modern statistic” because it is just being conducted in several elections this year. It is not that far different with several research or other surveys that used number of sample to predict population value.
The concept actually had been known in compliance with the existence of sampling theory decades ago. The difference is, if survey or polling is done before or after the election asking about someone’s opinion who become the respondent, then in Quick Count it recorded facts in the form of notes of what voters voted in selected sample polling stations. Here, to predict the winner, of course it will be more valid to count something that is based on fact rather than someone’s opinion.
Indeed, the ability to present this result quick and accurate of course not an easy task. At least, there are two factors that could strengthen the success of Quick Count.
First, not separated from the ability of organizers in determine number and distribution of sample polling stations. This effort becomes very important because sample have to reflect the characteristic of population. Determining correctly number of sample as much of 2.000 polling stations from about more than 500.000 polling stations (population) have implication to the distribution of sample polling stations that mirror with the distribution of population. Therefore, there is a possibility to include polling stations that are hard to reach (remote areas) judging from distance and communication facility point of view.
In reality the success in determining sample polling stations and its distributions also must be supported by the ability of the organizers to tackle types of technical problems in data collection when the election is done.
Related to this, second problem that needs to be tackled are distance, communication access that support the rapid reporting, and also the ability to organize thousands of recorder (volunteers) distributed in thousand of polling stations.
Of course all of these have direct consequences to source of fund spend, especially if from the beginning there is no network developed across this country.
To have control over these factors can guarantee to ensure the success of organizers.
Inaccurateness that occurred or the differences among different institutions on the results is not far from these factors. Except, political interests are being accommodated behind the true numbers of recording result.
(Research & Development Team KOMPAS) |
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