A governor from Prabowo's own party now outpolls him three to one

Indonesian pollster SMRC asked voters in October to pick a next president from a list of 24 names. 35.5 per cent chose West Java governor Dedi Mulyadi, and 9.8 per cent chose Prabowo Subianto. Last November the president was on 34.9 per cent and Mulyadi, usually called KDM, was on 19.7 per cent. Put the two men head to head and the reversal is sharper still: in February and March, Prabowo led 50.5 to 42.6; by October, KDM led 69.3 to 18.8. Over the same period Prabowo's job approval slid from about 81.2 per cent to 44.5 per cent, a fall of roughly 37 points.

Writing for Indonesia at Melbourne, Saidiman Ahmad reads this as a bill coming due. Researchers call it "economic voting": people reward a government when they feel better off and punish it when they do not. In the same survey, 50.8 per cent called the economy bad or very bad, against 17.4 per cent who called it good. Among people who know the free nutritious meals programme (MBG), 61.4 per cent are unhappy with how it is run. Among those who know the Merah Putih village cooperatives, 71 per cent doubt the cooperatives will do well in their own area.

The strange part is where the anger goes. Seven of the eight parties in parliament sit in the governing coalition, and PDIP, the one formally outside it, rarely behaves like an opposition. So the protest vote has settled on a man inside the government: KDM is a member of Gerindra, Prabowo's own party. He holds about 95 per cent approval in West Java, where roughly 18 per cent of all Indonesians live. Saidiman compares the path to Jokowi's: mayor of Solo, governor of Jakarta, then president. The reward, he writes, "has simply changed address."

Why it matters

A president this far down in the polls governs differently, and the flagship programmes behind the numbers are ones many families touch directly, through school meals and village cooperatives. Watch whether the response is to fix those programmes or to defend them, and watch what Gerindra does with a rising star it cannot easily discipline. Anyone whose work depends on a government contract or a policy staying put should expect the rules to move with the politics.