No, an Indonesian talk show did not hold a survey showing Prabowo Subianto as the most popular choice for president

The August 25 post on the nusanews.id website was headlined: “Mata Najwa polling: 85% choose Prabowo-Sandi, 15% choose Jokowi-Ma’ruf”.

It was referring to rival tickets set to compete in Indonesia’s 2019 presidential election: Prabowo Subianto and his running mate Sandiaga Uno, and incumbent president Joko Widodo and his running mate Ma’ruf Amin.

Mata Najwa is a major Indonesian talk show. It airs on TV station Trans 7.

The article says: “Facebook Fans Page Mata Najwa Trans7 has created an open poll for netizens regarding presidential and vice presidential candidates.”

The article says that 85 percent of respondents favored the Subianto-Uno pair and the other 15 percent chose the Widodo-Amin ticket.

Mata Najwa digital team member Susangga, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP that the talk show has not carried out a survey on Indonesia’s upcoming presidential election.

“It’s not,” Susangga replied via WhatsApp message when asked whether the Facebook poll was carried out by the talk show.

He said the Mata Najwa Trans7 page did not belong to the talk show.

The talk show’s official Facebook page is called Mata Najwa.

The “Mata Najwa Trans7” Facebook page that reportedly posted the results of the false survey was no longer available on August 29.

Widodo has been the front runner for the elections by a considerable margin in many recent polls, including this May survey by Indo Barometer, a Jakarta-based pollster.

The nusanews.id post that reported on the false survey has been shared on Facebook to more than 2.7 million people, according to data from social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.

Image

Screenshot of CrowdTangle data