Is Aliran Still Available? A Study on the Relationship between Party Support and Socioeconomic Backgrounds in Indonesia

Abstract

By using multinomial logistic regression, this study tries to identify the socio-economic factors and cleavages which affect political preference of Indonesian electorates. It focuses on the largest four parties i.e. Democratic Party (Partai Demokrat, PD), Indonesian Democratic Party - Struggle (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia – Perjuangan, PDI-P), Golkar Party (Partai Golkar, Golkar), and Prosperous Justice Party (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera, PKS). Based on the statistical results, I argue for two points. First, I find that although the religious cleavage or aliran still exists in Indonesian party politics, contrary to conventional wisdom, aliran does not function as differentiating Islamic parties from secular parties. Instead, it divides between the secular parties. This finding implies that existing party classifications assuming an ideological difference between secular and Islamic parties should be reconsidered or adjusted. Second, whereas the religious cleavage has weakened, socioeconomic factors such as age, region, ethnicity, and the level of education have had a significant influence. In particular, the exclusive support of the highly educated voters for the PKS provides an implication on the relation between the emergence of the middle class and the moderate Islamic party.