STUDENT’S PERCEPTIONS ON FICTIONAL CANDIDATE ON GENERAL

ELECTION 2019

(STUDY CASE OF NURHADI-ALDO PHENOMENON)

FACHRIZAL ANSHORI BUDIMANSYAH

20160510093

I. ABSTRACT

This research was carried out on the basis of concern for the quality of democracy in Indonesia. In
the 2019 political year, 5 elections were held simultaneously. Namely the election of the executive
body, and also the legislature. This study aims to find out the student opinions of Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta University from various faculties related to the phenomenon of the Fiction president
better known as the Dildo couple (Nurhadi-Aldo). In addition, this study aims to examine public
opinion regarding the fictional presidential campaign that has an impact on the Golput movement
in Indonesia in the 2019 General Election. This research was conducted by distributing online-
based questionnaires filled by 21 Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta students from various faculties.

Keyword : Dildo Couple, General Election, Fictional Candidate

II. INTRODUCTION

Harris G. Warren and friends, define that Elections are the accusations when citizens choose their
officials and decide, what they want the government to do. ng these citizens decisions determine
what rights they want to have and keep. In general election 2019, for very first time a presidential
election and the election of legislative members have been held simultaneously. Every state has
their own presidential election system which has particular characteristics. When we talk about
about United states we would know about two type of vote which is Popular vote and Electoral
Vote, and when we talk about Indonesia, we would know about single type of vote. (Sulaeman)

Beside the fact of executive and legislative elected at the same time, there is a unique phenomenon
when the political saturation that occurred because it only had 2 candidates, which triggered
appearance a fictional candidate who was created as a protest and criticism of the saturation.
Nurhadi-Aldo was used as a fictional presidential candidate as an alternative form to show that the
community was bored with pre-election conditions that were less educative and tended to overtake
each other. because of the Nurhadi-Aldo phenomenon, making pre-election conditions more
attractive to be studied and understood more deeply.

Many researcher has done their studies and experiments about General Elections itself or more
spesific. Like what Thom File has done on September 2018, he investigate about the characteristic
of many kinds of Voters and why someone who won’t vote. The research concluded that the
composition of the voters can be divided into many characteristics like on educational background,
the understanding of the voters itself or rely on the age of the voters (File, 2018). Beside Thom
File, Darren Lilleker, Daniel Jackson, Einar Thorsen and Anastasia Veneti (2016) also done their
research on United States General election 2016 analysis which concern on Media, Voters and
Campaign that has done by elected Presidential Donald Trump while the result of the research said
that Media of the campaign and how the effort of image building of the candidates affected the
number of votes that they catch. (Lilleker, Jackson, & Veneti, 2016) Sanmita Bhattacharya, Chao
Yang, Padmini Srinivasan(2015) generated the conclusion that Twitter can be one of the media to
know how the personalities of the candidates can be described into 14 personalities. Among of the
prevoius research, none of them discussing about the phenomenon of fictional candidate.
(Bhattacharya, Yang, & Srinivasan, 2015)

Concerning to the recent phenomena in Indonesia about general election which only has 2
candidates and the emergence of fictional candidates in this country's political contestation my
research would concern on what is the main factor in the emergence of fictional candidates in the
contestation of 2019 presidential elections and how the perspective of College Student on the
fictional candidate phenomenon especially in Indonesian General Election campaign which well
known as Dildo Cuple or Nurhadi-Aldo.

III. RESEARCH QUESTION

a. How the Universitas Muhammaduyah Yogyakarta student’s perception on Fictional
Candidate in general election 2019?
b. Does the fictional candidate trigger the "abstentions" movement?
IV. RESEARCH METHODS

a. Participants

The participants were 22 undergraduates student, whose come from all faculty in Universitas
Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. It includes 2 student for each faculties. Participants in this study will
be on a voluntary basis.

Identity

Figure 1 Participation Age

This diagram describes the age identity of the resource person. Of the 21 informants, 33.3% or
about 7 were 21 years old, 28.6% or 6 were 20 years old, 19% or 4 were 19 years old and the rest
were 18 and 24 years old. Looking at the data, the dominance of age 21 and 20 is not too different
from other age variables.
 Figure 2 Participant Education Background

This diagram offered the information about origin of faculty from each informant. This diagram
shown that most of the informant come from Faculty of social and political science with the
percentage on 61,9 % while the other faculties only contributed in 19% from faculty of Economics
and Business and faculty the other faculties for the rest.

b. Materials

This study will be used questionnaires in collecting the data. The researcher will questionnaires
based online to some students from different faculties to represent opinion on the topic of the
various disciplines. Here are the blueprint of the question that delivered to the volunteer.

c. Design and Procedure

In conducting this study, researcher will disseminate online-based questionnaires to obtain general
perceptions. The questionnaire will be distributed for 1 week with social media as the main basis
for distribution tools. by utilizing the Whatsapp Group and the LINE group, as the main tools. then
the researcher will conduct an interview with the content of the same problem with the
questionnaire. the results of the questionnaire will be primary consideration.
1. First step:

This research is a survey research which is conducted by giving online questionnaire to

participants. The first step is the questionnaire can be accessed freely by the participants on google
form via shared link.

2. Second step:

The next step is the participants should fill up their identity

3. Third step:

The next is there are several questions that participant should read carefully, and at the beginning
there are direction and instruction

4. Fourth step:

The participants should answer the question one by one in the answer column by choosing a
statement scale ranging from strongly disagree, disagree, quite disagree quiet agree, agree, and
strongly agree. and then after answering all question, they should submit them by clicking
“submit” button.

V. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

a. Participation on General Election 2019

Figure 3 Participant's Participation on General Election 2019

In this diagram shown that from 21 student informant, 76,2% participated in general election 2019
while 23,8% decided not participated in general election. It means that the number of participation
in general election more than those who did not participate.

b. Source of information

Figure 4 Participant’s Source of Information

This diagram shown that most of the informant got the information of fictional candidate in general
election come from social media. The percentage who known the fictional candidate or dildo
couple from social media is 85,7%. While the other sources like Television, newspaper and other
sources is the rest and the percentage is around 14,3%.

c. Opinion about Dildo couple

Table 1 short question and answer

No Question items Responses

1. How you see the phenomena of Dildo - just as a joke
Couple? - as a form of boredom towards the
parties to the contestation
- as intermezzo
2. Why the phenomena of Dildo Couple? - as a form of boredom towards the
parties to the contestation
- forms of dissatisfaction with 2019
presidential candidates
 - looking for sensations
3. Does Dildo couple reflected to the - yes, because By bringing
abstentions movement? rationalization about the mess of
politics ahead of the election, political
blinders will agree and choose to
become abstentions
- Not teaching abstentions, but trying to
get the public to understand the
electoral process from the candidates
- Only entertainment with no doctrine
- Depending on each the personality of
each

This table provides information obtained from short questions and answers. There are 3 major
questions provided. From 21 informants who responded to the 3 questions. The first question was
asked to find out how student opinion is related to the phenomenon of fictional presidents. Around
95% of the number of informants thought that this phenomenon was merely a joke and also a
breath of fresh air between the disputes and political compositions in 2019. The rest thought that
as a form of protest would be the saturation of the 2019 general election.

The second question was asked to find out related opinions why this fictional presidential
phenomenon arose. Of the many responses to this question, 75% of the responses assume that this
phenomenon arises because of the saturation between the competition that occurred during the
2019 general election. 10% think that this phenomenon arises because of dissatisfaction about what
is being offered by political figures who are competing either in terms of programs offered or
campaign styles. The remaining 15% think that this phenomenon arises because seeking sensation
also takes advantage of the situation.

The last question was asked to find out the perceptions of students regarding the impact of
abstentions caused by the phenomenon of fictional presidents. This question is quite interesting
because it raises a lot of speculation. Of the many responses collected, 35% thought that this did
not have a significant impact on the number of abstentions that existed in 2019 political
contestation because it did not raise the ugliness of the other candidate pairs. On the other hand,
55% thought that the phenomenon of this fictional candidate led opinion to abstentions because
his campaign led to dissatisfaction and distrust in other presidential candidates. The rest, around
15% think that this depends on the individual's individual and cannot be ascertained.

VI. Discussion

This research was conducted to find out how the perceptions of Universitas Muhammadiyah
Yogyakarta students towards the phenomenon of fictional presidents that emerged amid political
contestation in Indonesia in 2019. In addition, this research also examined the opinion that fictional
presidents were seen as a form of abstentions in the political contestation.

The results of the distributed questionnaire show that student enthusiasm for this phenomenon is
very significant. The majority of students think this is a mere joke. This is reflected in other
countries. Djadjat sudradjat as the editorial board of media group, in may 2019 wrote a report
about president zelensky's victory in the general elections in ukraine. At that time, zelensky
nominated only for fun, but eventually was able to defeat the prospective incumbent (Sudradjat,
2019). Djadjat said that zelensky was the right choice of the people of one of the countries of the
former soviet union who were bored with things that often frowned. Examples in front of the eye
include Ukraine and Russia tensions and domestic economic turmoil. This reflects that starting
from just entertainment and boredom can lead to voter opinion in general elections, especially
millennials.

This study also revealed that the phenomenon of fictional presidents was triggered because of the
saturation and dissatisfaction with what was offered both incumbent candidates and opposition
candidates. Probe into the results of the questionnaires that are disseminated as to why this
phenomenon arises, rather than just the dissatisfaction that arises but why do they feel dissatisfied?
Nasiwan, an academission in the field of citizenship from Yogyakarta state university, said that
things such as dissatisfaction with presidential candidates arose because of the growing discourse
among the public so that people began to try to control candidates or public officials. In addition,
there are also certain community groups, especially urban groups, that have begun to implement
civil society (Nasiwan).
Finally, this research reveals the fact that opinions related to abstentions in the Dildo campaign are
indeed unconsciously felt by students. They assume that the campaign carried out by Nurhadi-
Aldo brought dogma and a vote of no confidence and was not satisfied with the other candidate
pairs. This was discussed by Dr. Idham Holik, Member of the West Java KPU Commissioner. he
explained and compared the abstentions movements that occurred in 1971 and in 2019 (Holik,
2019).

Tempo magazine, June 19, 1971, reported that the golput movement was initiated by the political
ideas of the former Chairperson of Kebayoran Student Imam Walujo Sumali in the article
"Eleventh Party for the Younger Generation" (Walujo, 1971). The Eleventh Party Terma is
intended to accommodate the voices of the younger generation as well as those who do not want
to vote for the participants of the 1971. Election According to the Imam, the party is the White
Party with plain white images.

In the 2019 Election, in e-flyer (electronic flyers), fictional presidential candidates Dildo declared
himself number 10. The message of satirical political communication Dildo bears a resemblance
to the idea of the "Eleventh Party" proposed by Imam Walujo Sumali.

In the study of voter behavior, abstention is actually known as the blank vote (white vote) or white
vote (white vote) in which a voter casts an illegitimate vote by marking or casting a ballot wrong
or otherwise not at all marking or voting. Voters who give empty or white votes are protest voices.

VII. Conclusion

Of the many discussions, we can conclude that the phenomenon of President Fiction is indeed
often a lot happening overseas not only in Indonesia. Not only as a joke, but President Fiction is
also considered as an effort to foster critical community related to chaotic politics. However, this
has an impact on dissatisfied opinion and disbelief in presidential candidates in general election
2019.
VIII. Reference
Bhattacharya, S., Yang, C., & Srinivasan, P. (2015). Perceptions of presidential candidates' personalities
in twitter.

File, T. (2018). Population Characteristics. Who Votes? Congressional Elections and the American
Electorate: 1978–2014.

Holik, D. I. (2019, February 2019). Abstensi Membayangi Pemilu 2019. Retrieved from Inews Website:
https://www.inews.id/article/article/abstensi-membayangi-pemilu-2019/451877

Lilleker, D., Jackson, D., & Veneti, E. T. (2016). US Election Analysis 2016: Media, Voters and the
Campaign.

Nasiwan. (n.d.). Menakar Moralitas Elit Politik Melalui Kontak Politik. 141-150.

Sudradjat, D. (2019, Mei 7). Presiden Zelensky Bermula dari Fiksi. Retrieved from Media Indonesia
Website: https://mediaindonesia.com/podiums/detail_podiums/1512-presiden-zelensky-
bermula-dari-fiksi

Sulaeman, A. (n.d.). DEMOKRASI, PARTAI POLITIK, DAN PEMILIHAN KEPALA DAERAH. Jurnal Ilmu
Pemerintahan.

Walujo, I. (1971). Eleventh Party for the Younger Generation. Jakarta: Tempo Magazine.