Makna Pemilu: Ketidakrunutan Arti Penting Pemilu Bagi Pemilih

Abstract

Social scientists have offered some ideal concepts of election for voters, including the opportunity for voters to select political officers, and the opportunity to influence government programs or policies. Both are ideally should be the salience of elections for voters, and while social scientists focused on how the salience in practices. Literature gave us two discussion spaces. One, how the salience should be defined in research. Two, cause and effect of the salience on practices. The question "is this election important to you?" is the type of question commonly used in surveys, and it does not provide a better picture of what respondents are thinking. This article tries to get involved in the first space and expand the discussion on the second space, so that a better picture is obtained. We define the salience by some variables, not just 'is the election important?". We employ the meaning of election, usefulness, expectation, and trust. This article uses a survey in Pati and Demak regencies, Central Java, Indonesia, 2019, which generated by an in-depth interview in 2018. We used multistage sampling for 800 respondents, by considering demographics and geographic reasons. By discussing data and concepts, we found incompatibility and inconsistency in how they perceive election. It makes the salience more complicated.