The biggest single-day election on the planet is taking place on February 14 in Indonesia. It is the world’s third-largest democracy, largest Muslim-majority country, and tenth-largest economy by purchasing power parity. About 206 million domestic voters and 1.5 million overseas Indonesians are eligible to vote in this year’s landmark presidential election as well as the national legislature and local races. Other countries like the United States conduct multi-day elections and the voter turnout is not nearly as high. Indonesia is a young but mighty democracy leading the way in free and fair elections.

After thirty-two years of authoritarian rule under former President Suharto and two back-to-back presidential terms with incumbent President Joko Widodo, Indonesians can reiterate their commitment to citizen-led politics rather than corrupt elites. This year’s election dynamics are influenced by a slew of variables, but it is worth following three: elite meddling, the youth vote, and social media. Due to Indonesia’s economic and strategic importance, Washington is also following these three forces and is prepared to foster stable, long-term relations with the 2024 presidential winner and beyond.

Meet the Candidates

The leading candidates competing in the first round of presidential elections on February 14 (if no one wins 50 percent, then a second round is slated for June) are Prabowo Subianto, Anies Baswedan, and Ganjar Pranowo. The latest national survey from leading pollster Indikator Politik showed Subianto in the lead with 45.8 percent of the vote, followed by Baswedan at 25.5 percent, Ganjar at 23 percent, and undecided at 5.8 percent.

Widodo is ineligible to run for a third term due to term limits, but has unofficially endorsed Subianto, who is running for president for the third time after losing to Widodo twice. Prabowo is the establishment candidate as he is Widodo’s minister of defense and son-in-law of Suharto, the longest-serving president in Indonesian history. The United States previously sanctioned Prabowo due to credible allegations of human rights violations in the 1990s, when he served as commander of the Indonesia Army Special Forces and was allegedly linked to disappearances of activists and genocide in East Timor. Prabowo’s campaign targets Widodo’s large base of millennial and Generation Z voters who are too young to remember his brutal track record.

Prabowo, seventy-two years old, faces two younger competitors representing the new guard. Baswedan, fifty-four years old, is running as the change candidate. He earned two advanced degrees in the United States and went on to find the Indonesian equivalent of Teach for America, served as governor of Jakarta, and led the Ministry of Education for the Widodo administration. He is endorsed by hardline Islamist parties and his platform is designed to attract Muslim voters.

The third-place candidate is Ganjar, also fifty-four years old, and a former governor of Indonesia’s largest province, Central Java. Voters generally perceive him as a continuation of Widodo. The largest political party, the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle, is keeping Ganjar on a short leash in exchange for their endorsement. In April 2023, the party made Ganjar and other governors deny Israeli participation in the 2023 FIFA Under-20 World Cup, which subsequently removed Indonesia’s hosting privileges and led to a backlash in the polls for Ganjar’s presidential bid.

Incumbent Interference

The authoritarian regime under Major General Suharto governed Indonesia for thirty-two years from 1967 to 1998. Since then, Indonesia has implemented reforms to transition to a democratic regime with competitive elections. However, these reforms failed to completely eliminate power among many Suharto-era elites, who are still entrenched throughout Indonesia’s government and wield influence over its electoral system. For example, leading up to the 2004 elections, the government devised a new open-list quota system that was supposed to give citizens control over House of Representative candidates, but high benchmarks make it impossible to win without the blessing of an establishment party.

When incumbent Widodo was first elected in 2014, he was an outsider fighting the establishment. However, after eight years in office, the elite-dominated political system remodeled him into one of their own. It is illegal for a sitting president to explicitly endorse active political campaigns, yet Widodo has made highly publicized appearances with the Prabowo-Gibran ticket. Widodo has denied any legal or ethical wrongdoing, instead telling reporters, “Yes, a president can join a campaign. Yes, a president can pick a side. All that is permitted as long as he does not use state facilities.”

Observers question whether Widodo is attempting to establish a dynasty due to his eldest son Gibran Rakabuming running as vice president alongside presidential candidate Subianto. Widodo has openly shared his intent to “meddle” in the 2024 elections, and it seems he has already done so. Widodo’s brother-in-law and chief justice of the constitutional court ruled that the vice-presidential minimum age requirement could be lowered to thirty-five. Gibran is thirty-six years old.

Following the controversial ruling, an ethical panel found the chief justice guilty of misconduct and dismissed him from the constitutional court, and Widodo is under pressure to maintain neutrality in the upcoming election. Yet, the Prabowo-Gibran ticket still leads the polls by twenty points. This situation exemplifies the push and pull of Indonesian politics: Elites can tip the scales for their own benefit, but the scale is still responsive to the country’s reformed democratic system.

Young People in Indonesian Politics

Young Indonesians make up a uniquely powerful voting block in this year’s elections because they make up a large share of the population and turnout at relatively high rates. In 2023, Indonesia’s population had a median age of just under thirty years old according to the United Nations, and data from the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics show that Generation Z is the largest age group at 27.94 percent. Additionally, Indonesia is one of the rare countries with a minimum voting age of seventeen years old. Indonesians aged twenty-two to thirty years old are expected to dominate the 2024 electorate by comprising a 56.4 percent share of expected voters, or about 114 million voters nationwide.

For Generation Z and millennial Indonesians, well-paying employment is the top priority. Indonesia’s economy suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic, falling from upper-middle income status to lower-middle income status in July, 2021. Consequently, salaries and employment have suffered. According to most recent data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2022 recent college graduates aged twenty to twenty-four faced a 17.02 percent unemployment rate and those aged twenty-five to twenty-nine stood at 7.13 percent unemployment.

The top three presidential candidates have each laid out their respective plans for addressing employment. Prabowo’s running mate Gibran has emphasized the need to develop digital skills such as AI and blockchain for up-and-coming workers. To facilitate this technological literacy, Ganjar has called for free internet access to students nationwide. Both Prabowo and Ganjar aim to continue Widodo’s industrialization policies promoting mining and agriculture sectors. In contrast, Anies has argued for more job-creating, labor-intensive industries rather than expensive capital-intensive industries. Prabowo set a target for 19 million new jobs by 2030, Ganjar is aiming for 17 million, and Anies 15 million.

According to an Indikator Politik survey conducted in late December 2023, the Prabowo-Gibran ticket boasts the largest lead among those aged twenty-two to twenty-five and twenty-six to forty, but Prabowo is still beating both Ganjar and Anies in all age categories.

The Costs and Benefits of Social Media

Due to its large millennial and Generation Z populations, social media is serving as an important vehicle for political campaigning as well as disinformation. Indonesia is home to 171 million internet users, the world’s third-largest Facebook audience (119.9 million), the world’s fifth-largest Twitter audience (24 million), and the world’s second-largest TikTok audience (125 million). These online platforms are essential for winning favor among young Indonesians.

A 2019 study found that many Indonesians are unknowingly exposed to and spread misinformation. In the lead-up to this year’s election, the Ministry of Communications launched a “Beware of 2024 Election Hoaxes” campaign designed to raise public awareness of disinformation, more often called “hoaxes” in Indonesia. The same ministry has publicly requested that Facebook take down 450 hoaxes and regularly identifies and then discredits fake news stories on their website. All three presidential candidates have been targeted by disinformation campaigns. One fake TikTok account posing as Ganjar awarded users for interaction. Another widely-circulated story claimed that Anies had failed a mental health check. Some Indonesians falsely believed that seventy-two-year-old Prabowo was eligible to run for president due to misinformation that the maximum age was seventy years old.

Nonetheless, all the candidates have embraced social media as a strategy for garnering the young vote. Ganjar was the first to actively promote himself on TikTok and develop a persona as a man of the people. His campaign team shows Ganjar wearing leather jackets, joking with voters, and discussing penguins. Prabowo has taken advantage of social media to shed his reputation as a cold general and instead a warm grandfather figure. The K-pop community on Twitter has gravitated to Anies and his live TikTok streams are reaching up to 400,000 viewers each.

Even though the creation and dissemination of fake news is illegal, there are still workarounds utilized by rogue actors and established politicians alike. For example, during the 2019 presidential race between Widodo and Prabowo, both campaigns allegedly paid influencers to spread propaganda in favor of both candidates. Later, pro-government stories downplaying the unrest in West Papua circulated across multiple social media platforms. So, despite the official condemnation of hoaxes and public programs targeting their removal, misinformation is alive and well in Indonesian politics.

Washington’s View on Indonesian Elections

The results of Indonesia’s presidential election will have the greatest impact on Indonesians’ livelihoods, communities, and trust in government. However, it is also one of several key 2024 elections that will produce ripple effects on the Indo-Pacific region as a whole, namely the January elections in Taiwan, April elections in India, and November elections in the United States. Indonesia’s sheer population and economic size make it a decisive player in regional power dynamics that Washington is so keen on balancing in favor of the US alliance bloc and against that of China.

During Widodo’s visit to the White House in November 2023, the two leaders agreed to upgrade the US-Indonesia diplomatic relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. The official joint statement covered a range of policy areas but emphasized trade, economic reforms, critical minerals, supply chains, clean energy, security in Southeast Asia and abroad, and defense cooperation. Indonesia’s domestic economy stands to benefit from such cooperation, and the United States could use another economic and defense ally in the Indo-Pacific. Regardless of which candidate ascends to the presidency, the United States has demonstrated a commitment to Indonesia’s future.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.

Image: Defense Department (Photo by Chad J. McNeeley)