Voting Behaviour

Indonesia’s transition from Soeharto’s authoritarian period into more democratic period in 1998, led Indonesia to change the administration. Indonesia’s presidential election was one of them. The first direct presidential was held in 2004 after 36 years of indirect presidential election, and it inaugurated Soesilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and Jusuf Kalla (JK) as president and vice president for period of 2004-2009. SBY ran as incumbent on the next election and obtained significant vote of 60.80 percent. As an incumbent, SBY had the advantage to employ government spending to increase his vote for the next election. SBY was famous as a risk averse president based on the policies taken. However, seeing the pattern of discretionary spending allocation, SBY was a risk lover based on his higher spending in the low support district. This study used the data from General Election Commission (KPU) and Ministry of Finance to investigate the effectiveness of government spending on voter’s behaviour at district level in Indonesia. Our study confirmed that government spending and previous period performance outcome of incumbent were factors that played important role on SBY’s victory.