General elections were held in Indonesia on 17 April 2019. For the first time in the country's history, the president, the vice president, members of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), and members of local legislative bodies (DPRD) were elected on the same day with over 190 million eligible voters. Sixteen parties participated in the elections nationally, including four new parties.
The presidential election, the fourth in the country's history, used a direct, simple majority system, with incumbent president Joko Widodo, known as Jokowi, running for re-election with senior Muslim cleric Ma'ruf Amin as his running mate against former general Prabowo Subianto and former Jakarta vice governor Sandiaga Uno for a five-year term between 2019 and 2024. The election was a rematch of the 2014 presidential election, in which Jokowi defeated Prabowo. The legislative election, which was the 12th such election for Indonesia, saw over 240,000 candidates competing for over 20,000 seats in the MPR and local councils for provinces and cities or regencies, with over 8,000 competing for the People's Representative Council (DPR) seats alone. The election was described as "one of the most complicated single-day ballots in global history." Jokowi's 85.6 million votes were the most votes cast for a single candidate in any democratic election in Indonesia's history, exceeding the record of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who won 73.8 million votes in 2009. His successor Prabowo Subianto surpassed his record in the 2024 election winning with more than 96 million votes.
On 21 May 2019, the General Elections Commission (KPU) declared Jokowi victorious in the presidential election, with over 55% of the vote. Widodo's PDI-P finished first in the DPR election with 19.33%, followed by Prabowo's Gerindra with 12.57%, then Golkar with 12.31%, the National Awakening Party (PKB) with 9.69%, the NasDem Party with 9.05%, and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) with 8.21%.
In this election, Joko Widodo's coalition secured a majority in Gorontalo, a province previously held by the opposition. Simultaneously, Prabowo Subianto's coalition gained electoral victories in Southeast Sulawesi, Jambi, South Sulawesi, and Bengkulu.
Following the election, reports of the more than 7 million election workers, among which 569 had died during the lengthy voting and counting process, surfaced. Prabowo's campaign team claimed that the deaths were linked to fraud that disadvantaged him. As of 9 May 2019, the election commission (KPU) said the dead included 456 election officers, 91 supervisory agents and 22 police officers.
In the early morning of 22 May 2019, supporters of Prabowo protested in Jakarta against Jokowi's victory. The protest turned into a riot, which left eight people killed by security officers and over 600 injured.
Background
Elections in Indonesia were previously held separately, with a 2008 elections law regulating that presidential and legislative elections be held at least three months apart from one another. Following a 2013 Constitutional Court lawsuit, however, it was decided that the 2019 elections – which would have been the 12th legislative election and the 4th presidential election – would be held simultaneously. The stated intent of the simultaneous election was to reduce associated costs and minimize transactional politics, in addition to increasing voter turnout.
In the 2014 presidential election, Jakarta governor Joko Widodo defeated former general Prabowo Subianto to become the seventh President of Indonesia. Despite initially having a minority government, Jokowi later managed to secure the support of Golkar and the United Development Party, giving him control of the legislature. In the legislative elections of the same year, former opposition party PDI-P managed to secure the largest share in the DPR, ahead of Golkar and Gerindra.
Despite plans to introduce electronic voting, the DPR in March 2017 announced it would not mandate e-voting in the 2019 elections because of hacking fears and because of the lack of nationwide internet coverage. On 7 April 2017, the KPU, the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) and the Ministry of Home Affairs held a meeting with the People's Representative Council's special committee to deliberate a draft law concerning the 2019 elections. The Chairman of the House special committee deliberating the bill, Lukman Edy, announced on 25 April 2017 that Wednesday, 17 April 2019, had been agreed upon as the date for the elections.
Nominations of candidates for the national and regional legislatures as well as candidates for president and vice president were completed in September 2018. The campaign period was from 13 October 2018 to 13 April 2019 followed by a three-day election silence before the voting day on 17 April. The final results were planned to be announced on 22 May, while the inauguration of the president and vice president was scheduled for 20 October 2019.
Electoral system
The election was regulated by Law No. 7 of 2017. The KPU, a legally independent government body was responsible for organizing the election. In addition, the vote was monitored by the Bawaslu, which also had the authority to rule on violations of election rules (e.g. administrative errors, vote-buying, etc.). Any ethical violations committed by either Bawaslu or the KPU were to be handled by the Elections Organizer Honor Council (Dewan Kehormatan Penyelenggara Pemilu DKPP), which consists of one member from each body and five others recommended by the government.
Voters were given five ballot papers: for the president and vice president, Regional Representative Council (DPD), People's Representative Council (DPR), provincial council, and regency/municipal council (DPRD Provinsi and DPRD Kabupaten/Kota) members. Voters used a nail to poke a hole in the ballot paper indicating which party or candidate they wish to vote for, and then dip their fingers in ink as a precaution against voter fraud. Tabulation of the votes was done manually on paper. The KPU is legally required to announce the results of the election within 35 days of the vote, i.e., before 22 May 2019.
Presidential vote
To run for the presidency, a candidate had to be supported by political parties totalling 20% of the seats in the DPR or 25% of the popular vote in the previous legislative election.:Art. 222 Political parties were allowed to remain neutral if they were unable to propose their own candidate. However, if a neutral party(s) was able to endorse their own candidate, they were required to do so, or face being barred from participating in the next election.:Art. 235
The voting procedure followed a two-round system, with voters simply choosing one of the candidate pairs. A winning candidate was required to win a majority and at least 20% of the votes in over half of Indonesia's provinces. If no candidate pairs had fulfilled the criterion, the election would have to be repeated with a maximum of two participants.:Art. 416
Legislative vote
Members of both the DPR and the Regional People's Representative Councils (DPRD) were elected from multi-member electoral districts through voting with an open list system, and seat distribution is done with the Sainte-Laguë method in contrast to previous elections which utilised the Hare quota. There was a gender quota requiring at least 30% of registered candidates to be female.
A 4% parliamentary threshold was set for parties to be represented in the DPR, though candidates could still win seats in the regional councils provided they won sufficient votes. There were 575 DPR seats contested – up from 560 in 2014. Nationally, there were 80 DPR electoral districts, with 272 provincial and 2,206 municipal electoral districts. Candidates for the DPD were not allowed to be members of a political party. Four members were elected for each province – a total of 136.
Voters
The voting age for the election is 17, or less if already married. In practice, the Marriage Law 16 of 2019 raised the minimum age of marriage for women from 16 to 19 (in line with men), unless given a dispensation by the Indonesian Supreme Court. This means there will be, by 2024, practically no-one under the age of 17 qualified to vote, despite this being allowed for under election Law. Indonesians living overseas could vote in either the embassies and consulates, mobile polling stations, or by post, with the voting taking place on 8–14 April.
On 5 September 2018, the KPU announced there were 187 million registered voters – 185,732,093 in Indonesia and 2,049,791 voting abroad. They were to vote at 805,075 polling stations in Indonesia, with mail-in votes and 620 polling stations outside the country. A large number of polling stations (which was updated in April 2019 to 810,329) meant that there was an average of 200 voters per station, compared to 600 in the 2014 election. Around 17 million people are involved in some way in running the election, including the election officers, polling station guards, and registered witnesses from the candidates and parties.
Later on, 670,000 names were removed following complaints of duplicates in the voter registry, lowering the total voter count to around 187.1 million. Further investigations resulted in over 1 million duplicate voters discovered in Papua alone in October, out of the initial voter registry of 3 million. Bawaslu commissioners in early September estimated that there would be around 2 million duplicate voters, while opposition party Gerindra stated that they only had 137 million voters in their internal registry, and claimed that they found 25 million duplicate names in the registry. The figure was later updated to 192.8 million voters, including 2 million overseas.
Due to various logistical issues, namely with the distribution of ballot papers, 2,249 polling stations had to conduct follow-up voting. A repeat vote was also recommended in the Kuala Lumpur embassy due to suspected voter fraud and a follow-up election in Sydney due to the voting station there closing early.
Contesting parties A total of 27 political parties registered with the KPU to run in the election. On 17 February 2018, the KPU announced that 14 parties had passed the verification precedes and would be eligible to contest the legislative election. The PBB subsequently appealed to the Bawaslu, which ruled it could participate, making a total of 15 parties. The PKPI's appeal to Bawaslu was rejected, but an 11 April ruling by the National Administrative Court (Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara) decreed that the party was eligible to contest in the election. A further four parties contested in Aceh only.