“The Coattail-Effect” in the Concurrent Elections in Indonesia: Study on Increasing Turnouts and Use of Voting Rights in the 2019 Elections

In-depth research on the “coattail effect” in the exertion of elections in Indonesia has never been conducted comprehensively. Compared to other countries such as the United States, some Latin American and Western European countries, which already have had experience holding concurrent elections, the phenomenon of concurrent elections in Indonesia is relatively anew as it was just conducted for the first time in 2019. This study aims to seek and explain the coattail effect in concurrent elections in Indonesia by finding the relations between two major elections, namely the presidential and legislative elections, with the increasing level of voter turnout and the level of the use of voting rights in polling stations in the 2019 elections. By using quantitative methods and analysis of the relations through Structural Equation Modeling, this study involves 438 respondents who were randomly drawn in 38 districts/cities from 7 provinces in Indonesia, which is the unit of analysis in this study. This study reveals that the increase of the turnout of the election in 2019 is due to the competitiveness of the presidential election rather than other major elections held concurrently. This study filled the vacuum of research rubric on the theory of coattail effect in the practice of election in Indonesia.