Professional political pollsters as a liberal democratic epistemic community: Revisiting transformations of Indonesian political pollsters in the last decade of the Soeharto and post-Soeharto eras

Abstract

This article proposes the notion of the professional political pollster as a liberal democratic epistemic community. It examines transformations of Indonesian political pollster organisations in the last decade of the Soeharto era and in the post-Soeharto era. The findings extracted from the academic and mainstream media reports and the in-depth interview data collected from seven political pollsters associated with prominent Indonesian polling organisations are as follows. In the last decade of the Soeharto era, professional political pollsters visibly evolved but played less significant roles in Indonesian politics. As the Soeharto regime collapsed, they gradually had more substantial roles in Indonesian electoral politics and took shape as a robust and convergent liberal democratic epistemic community. After Indonesia's 2004 presidential election, most of them not only turned into political consultants but also engaged in a pollster war. This made them take shape as not only a fragile but also a divergent liberal democratic epistemic community. A set of recommendations is proposed to tackle this problem.