The 2024 Indonesian presidential election in the accounts of millennials: A case study of Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka voters in Semarang, Central Java

This empirical study explores the campaigning strategies used by Prabowo Subianto and Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who eventually won the Indonesian presidential election in 2024, and how millennial voters understand them. Utilizing the sociological concept of account to understand how millennial voters attempt to account for and justify their controversial political preference, the study applies a phenomenological approach by focusing on the narratives of 23 informants collected through snowball and purposive sampling in order to determine the recurrent themes in their accounting practice. The study finds three dominant themes as follows: the appreciation of Prabowo’s change of images, the preference for a down-to-earth speeches and discourses instead of the more abstract ones, and the empathic intimacy felt toward Gibran. The three themes, in the context of giving account, can be formulated as appreciative, straightforward, and relatedness accounting. This study contends that researchers must start paying closer attention to stories told and believed by those who, arguably, constitute the very foundation of any political election: the voters.