SURVEY ANALYSIS OF VOTER PREFERENCES IN DIRECT AND INDIRECT ELECTIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46874/373t6990Keywords:
direct election, indirect election, voter preferences, comparative survey, root cause analysisAbstract
Debates over direct and indirect elections remain an important issue in electoral studies, particularly regarding voter preferences. This study aims to analyze voters’ preferences toward both electoral systems through a comparative survey approach and to identify the factors influencing those preferences based on respondents’ perceptions using Root Cause Analysis (RCA) with the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) method. This study employed a quantitative approach using a comparative survey design (within-subject comparison) involving 149 eligible voters. The analysis was conducted by comparing respondents’ preferences toward both systems within the same group using a Likert scale to generate a preference index. The findings show that the preference index reached 83%, with a stronger preference for direct elections (85%). Nevertheless, indirect elections also received a relatively high level of approval, indicating that voter preferences are not dichotomous in nature. The FTA results mapped hierarchical cause-and-effect relationships among survey variables and respondents’ underlying reasons, showing that preferences were associated with political participation, trust in the electoral process, perceptions of representation, electoral experience, and understanding of electoral mechanisms, all of which interact with one another.
References
Anderson, C. J., & Tverdova, Y. V. (2003). Corruption, political allegiances, and attitudes toward government in contemporary democracies. American Journal of Political Science, 47(1), 91–109. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5907.00007
Birch, S. (2011). Electoral malpractice. Oxford University Press.
Blais, A. (2006). What affects voter turnout? Annual Review of Political Science, 9, 111–125. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.070204.105121
Blais, A., & Daoust, J. F. (2020). The motivation to vote: Explaining electoral participation. UBC Press.
Bol, D., Giani, M., Blais, A., & Loewen, P. J. (2021). The effect of COVID-19 lockdowns on political support: Some good news for democracy? European Journal of Political Research, 60(2), 497–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12401
Bowler, S., & Donovan, T. (2013). The limits of electoral reform. Oxford University Press.
Carreras, M., & İrepoğlu Carreras, Y. (2013). Trust in elections, vote buying, and turnout in Latin America. Electoral Studies, 32(4), 609–619. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2013.07.012
Claassen, C. (2020). Does public support help democracy survive? American Journal of Political Science, 64(1), 118–134. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12452
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th ed.). Sage Publications.
Dalton, R. J. (2017). The participation gap: Social status and political inequality. Oxford University Press.
Dalton, R. J., Van Sickle, A., & Weldon, S. (2010). The individual–institutional nexus of protest behaviour. British Journal of Political Science, 40(1), 51–73. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000712340999038X
Devine, D. (2024). Does political trust matter? A meta-analysis on the consequences of trust. Political Behavior, 46(4), 2241–2262. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-024-09916-y
DeVellis, R. F. (2017). Scale development: Theory and applications (4th ed.). Sage Publications.
Diamond, L., & Morlino, L. (2004). The quality of democracy: An overview. Journal of Democracy, 15(4), 20–31. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2004.0060
Dvořák, T., Zouhar, J., & Novák, J. (2017). The effect of direct democracy on turnout: Voter mobilization or participatory momentum? Political Research Quarterly, 70(2), 433–448. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917698043
Farrell, D. M. (2011). Electoral systems: A comparative introduction (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2019). Multivariate data analysis (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Hernández, E. (2018). Democratic discontent and support for mainstream and challenger parties: Democratic protest voting. European Union Politics, 19(3), 458–480. https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116518770812
Likert, R. (1932). A technique for the measurement of attitudes. Archives of Psychology, 140, 1–55.
Mansbridge, J., Rehfeld, A., Bohman, J., & Thompson, D. F. (2019). Political representation. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.431
Norris, P. (2014). Why electoral integrity matters. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107280861
Norris, P. (2019). Do perceptions of electoral malpractice undermine democratic satisfaction? The US in comparative perspective. International Political Science Review, 40(1), 5–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512118806783
Okes, D. (2019). Root cause analysis: The core of problem solving and corrective action. ASQ Quality Press.
Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill-building approach (7th ed.). Wiley.
Solijonov, A. (2016). Voter turnout trends. International IDEA.
Stamatis, D. H. (2019). Root cause analysis: A step-by-step guide to using the right tool at the right time. Productivity Press.
Stockemer, D., & Sundström, A. (2019). Corruption and voter turnout. Electoral Studies, 60, Article 102066. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2019.102066
Sugiyono. (2019). Metode penelitian kuantitatif, kualitatif, dan R&D. Alfabeta.
Van der Meer, T. W. G., & Hakhverdian, A. (2017). Political trust as the evaluation of process and performance: A cross-national study of 42 European countries. Political Studies, 65(1), 81–102. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321715607514
Vesely, W. E., Goldberg, F. F., Roberts, N. H., & Haasl, D. F. (1981). Fault tree handbook. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Electoral Governance Jurnal Tata Kelola Pemilu Indonesia

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Terms and Conditions of Publication
1. Author's Rights and Authorities
As an author, you (or your employer or institution) may do the following:
- make copies (print or electronic) of the article for your own personal use (not for commercial purpose), including for your own classroom teaching use;
- make copies and distribute such copies (including through email) of the article to research colleagues, but not allowed to distribute commercially and systematically, e.g. via an email list or list server;
- present the article at a meeting or conference and to distribute copies of the article to the delegates attending such meeting;
- retain all proprietary rights in any process, procedure, or article of manufacture described in the work;
- include the article in full or in part in a thesis or dissertation;
- use the article or any part thereof in a printed compilation of your works, such as collected writings or lecture notes, and other derivative works, with full acknowledgement to JEP as the original journal publishing the article;
- may reproduce material extracted from the article or derivative works for the author's personal use, but must consider the copyrights procedure.
All copies, print or electronic, or other use of the paper or article must include the appropriate bibliographic citation for the article’s publication in the journal.
2. Requests from Third Parties
Although authors are permitted to re-use all or portions of the article in other works, this does not include granting third-party requests for reprinting, republishing, or other types of re-use. Requests for all uses not included above, including the authorization of third parties to reproduce or otherwise use all or part of the article (including figures and tables), should be referred to KPU by going to our website at https://journal.kpu.go.id/.
3. KPU Copyright Ownership
KPU owns the copyrights to reproduce, distribute, disseminate, translate, and other uses in accordance with the existing Laws and Regulations.
Every accepted manuscript should be accompanied by "Copyright Transfer Agreement" prior to the article publication.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Electoral Governance (Jurnal Tata kelola Pemilu Indonesia) by KPU is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://journal.kpu.go.id/index.php/TKP
If you are a nonprofit or charitable organization, your use of an NC-licensed work could still run afoul of the NC restriction, and if you are a for-profit entity, your use of an NC-licensed work does not necessarily mean you have violated the term.



