Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party, which has led in most polls up to now, was slightly ahead with 17.4 percent followed by Golkar with 17.1 percent based on 6.77 percent of the quick count vote sample by the widely followed polling agency LSI. A first quick count result had put Golkar ahead with 33.7 percent. Yudhoyono has pushed reform in a bid to attract much-needed foreign investment, whereas Golkar, which is the president’s main coalition partner, is seen as a vestige of the Suharto era.
Analysts and officials stressed the likelihood of big swings in the early results. “The results will go up and down, depending on the counting reports from different areas across the country. We should expect a more stable result later in the day,” said Burhanuddin Muhtadi, an LSI researcher.
The LSI quick count is calculated from vote tallies at 2,100 sample polling stations with a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point. The elections, a massive exercise in democracy with more than 170 million eligible voters, were marred by overnight violence in which five people died in the eastern province of Papua.
The ballot has faced logistical problems ranging from incorrect voter rolls to confusion over new voting procedures, but the economy, jobs and corruption are among the top issues. Yudhoyono’s Democrat Party had been tipped to win the most seats in the parliamentary poll, lifting its share of the vote from 7.5 percent in 2004 to as much as 29 percent, according to one recent poll.
Benzer Haberler 
World
