IntroductionFollowing the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesia embarked on intensive project of local democratization. Under the banner of applying Law Number 32 of 2004 regarding Regional Government, local leaders-such as governors, district leaders (bupati), and mayors-were to be directly elected by the people for the first time in Indonesian political history. In particular, from June 2005 onward, Indonesia began experiencing two enormous waves of direct local leader elections (Pemilu Kepala Daerah, Pemilukada or Pilkada; hereafter Pilkada). The first episode was from mid-2005 to the beginning of 2009, and the second is still ongoing, beginning in late 2009 and extending to the beginning of 2014. From 2005 to 2008, Indonesia held no fewer than 500 Pilkada spanning all regions (Centre for Electoral Reform 2008). According to the Badan Pengawas Pemilu or Bawaslu (Election Monitoring Body), there were also approximately 244 Pilkada during the year 2010 (Indonesia, Badan Pengawas Pemilu [Bawaslu] 2011) and 116 Pilkada in 2011. In addition, from 2005 to 2010 more than 2,200 pairs of candidates ran for gubernatorial, bupati, and mayoral offices; there were also 333 pairs running for such offices in 2011 alone (ibid.). The implementation of Pilkada has resulted in the development of a remarkably vigorous local democracy, as indicated by the massive number of candidates and the frequency of elections. Judging from the large number of elections and candidates involved, Indonesia is unquestionably the country of elections.One of the most important phenomena marking Pilkada has been the involvement of polling and other pollsters' activities in these contests. The discussion of electoral politics in Indonesia has suddenly been filled with insider accounts of the results of polling activities,1) as polling has not only become a ubiquitous new fashion in local politics but has also noticeably colored the dynamics of local leader elections. It seems likely that political polling has become integral part of almost every local leader election in Indonesia.Previous seminal works addressing the topic of political polling in Indonesia have placed more emphasis on the mushrooming of polling at the national level (Mietzner 2009), the increasing role of pollsters as professionals (Mohammad Qodari 2010) or socalled polls-based political consultants,2) and the growing employment of political marketing that is the result of the presence of pollsters in the political arena (Ufen 2010). Those studies emphasize the impact of the presence of pollsters in the two national elections in 2004 and 2009. Although the involvement of polling and pollsters at the politically vibrant national level is headline-grabbing, previous works neglect the utilization of polling by political parties in attempting to identify electable candidates, as well as the fact that polling is used as a political weapon rather than a barometer of public sentiment.Admittedly, the utilization and exploitation of polling in political history is not the newest phenomenon. In his classic seminal work more than 50 years ago, Louis Harris (1963), one of the key founders of polling, assertively foresaw that polls were an important part of the arsenal of weapons used in modern American political campaigns. R. A. Camp (1996) enthusiastically describes polling as a device that political leaders take advantage of for their own political interest, specifically to indicate successful platforms and increase their ability to defeat their opponents as well as to improve their political image. In a similar vein, Dennis Johnson (2001; 2009) and Christopher Wlezien and Robert Erikson (2003) view polling as being exploited by politicians to enhance their image during the campaign period. In short, it is not uncommon to take advantage of polling in political games.However, in the context of Indonesia, one of the largest democratic countries in the world, a study discussing the development of public opinion polling and how it has been used (and exploited) seems exceptionally limited. …