Low Voter Turnout in Kepulauan Riau Province Gubernatorial Election

摘要

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors behind the large number of absentees among voters in regional elections (Pilkada) in Riau Islands province, Indonesia. Since 2005, people have their right to vote for their own local leader that was previously selected by the parliament to become a candidate. However, this democratic reform was not accompanied by voters' enthusiasm to cast their vote. In 2015, the Election Education Network for the People found that there were still more than 50% voters who did not use their rights to elect their governor candidate in Batam. Lower voter turnout was affected by Golput (Golongan Putih) or non-voting which was driven by various reasons, but the most popular causes were protests against misconducts in the implementation of elections, loss of expectation to and trust in candidates, and loss of trust in the political system. For this paper, we conducted a quantitative survey to 400 respondents of those who did not cast their vote during the gubernatorial election of Kepulauan Riau Province in 2015. This paper examines non-voting behavior using psychological and rational choice approaches, particularly on three main variables that may have provided the motive behind the non-voting behavior of the eligible voters, i.e. candidate orientation, issue orientation, and media orientation. It argues that despite the fact that the voters know the two candidates running for governor office as both were incumbents (governor and vice-governor were both run for the governor office), the voters chose to not to cast their votes for several reasons; i.e. the lack of accessible information about the vision of the candidates, and the lack of clarity of programs offered by the candidates.