Yesterday, Indonesia headed to the polls to choose its first new present for a decade. Late on Wednesday, the result was not entirely clear: both Joko Widodo, the governor of Jakarta, and former army general Prabowo Subianto are claiming victory.<\/p>\n
Here’s how election day played out on social media, and what we know so far.<\/p>\n
AIYA’s own Liam Gammon (@Gammonator<\/a>) prepared a handy backgrounder<\/a> before polls opened, outlining the basics of the process:<\/p>\n Did we mention that this election is huge? It\u2019s the world\u2019s biggest single-day direct presidential election, with nearly 190 million voters on thousands of islands eligible to participate. That means that, with the limited resources available to it, Indonesia\u2019s electoral commission, the Komisi Pemilihan Umum (KPU), can\u2019t possibly count the votes on election day like we\u2019re used to in Australia. The official KPU numbers won\u2019t be released until some time after the election day.<\/p>\n So, private polling agencies team up with TV networks to release \u2018quick counts\u2019, which are based upon data sent in by reporters stationed at a randomly-selected sample of voting booths. These quick counts are generally accurate to within a few percentage points\u2014but given that recent opinion polls predict an extremely close result tomorrow, the quick counts potentially may not make it clear who has actually won on Wednesday. It may take days, weeks or even months to know the official outcome if the result is particularly tight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There’s no question: today’s poll is massive<\/em>.<\/p>\n Indonesia is employing 4.1 million poll workers today. That’s more than the population of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n \u2014 Aaron Connelly (@ConnellyAL) July 9, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Overseas polling took place on Saturday, with expats heading to consulates in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and the Indonesian embassy in Canberra to cast their vote.<\/p>\nVoting overseas<\/h2>\n