"The peoples interest in the presidential election is relatively high reaching 85 percent and exceeding their interest in the legislative election," Pol-Tracking Institute Director Hanta Yudha told a press conference here on Sunday.
Hanta said that the high interest in the presidential election was boosted by the many figures to be named as presidential candidates while the incumbent president would no longer be nominated.
Besides that the high interest was also boosted by their high expectation from the next president.
"About 9.7 percent respondents said they were not interested in the presidential election while 5.30 percent others had no option/gave no votes in the survey," he said.
Most of the respondents still favored male presidential candidates and vice presidential candidates or about 61.8 percent of the respondents.
According to Hanta, only about 32 percent respondents said there was no problem with male or female presidential/vice presidential candidates.
"There are two percent respondents who wanted the presence of female presidential candidates so that the gender issue in the presidential race is still an important factor for voters in deciding their choice," he said.
In the survey, according to Hanta, a total of 66 percent respondents did not question the ethnicity of candidates but 29 percent others said ethnicity still influenced their interest in voting for a presidential/vice presidential candidate. Of this, 25 percent wanted candidates from Java and four percent wanted ones from outside Java.
"There are respondents who still consider ethnic background as a factor for deciding their choice in voting for a presidential/vice presidential candidate," he said.
The survey also revealed that 46.83 percent respondents said they did not question about the age of the candidates. But 34 percent of the respondents preferred candidates who came from the younger generation while only 15 percent preferred those coming from the older generation.
"This means that the public wants the presence of candidates from the younger generation in the presidential and vice presidential elections," Hanta said.
(A014)
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
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