PDIP Lead Exit Poll

Jakarta (Antara) - The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) led the exit poll in the legislative election with 19.26 percent of the votes, according to two pollsters on Wednesday. The Golkar Party came second with 12.86 percent and the Greater Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party finished third with 10.26 percent, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Cyrus Network said. However, the result of the exit poll also showed that the number of voters who replied "secret" and gave "no reply" rose to 15.39 percent and 3.98 percent, respectively. The exit poll conducted by CSIS and Cyrus Network on 8,000 voters was designed to gauge public opinion shortly after voters left the polling booths. Sampling was taken by taking account of the proportion of voters in each district in the 77 electoral constituencies. The polling stations taken for sampling were located at 2,000 villages. The exit poll had an error margin of 1 percent and confidence rate of 95 percent. By Wednesday afternoon, the vote count from the exit poll was still underway. The result of the exit poll will be announced by the two pollsters at the CSIS office in Central Jakarta at 03.00 Western Standard Indonesia Time (WIB). Previously, the Indonesian Broadcast Commission (KPI) called on pollsters to announce the result of a quick vote count from the 2014 elections at 13.00 WIB. "This was to ensure that the principles of direct, general, free, secret, honest and fair elections could be upheld," KPI Deputy Chairman Idy Muzayyad said. (*) Reporting by Amie Fenia Arimbi