Islamic Politics and Local Electoral Support in an Urban Setting: the Case of the Prosperous Justice Party

In this article, the author seeks to explain the relationship between the types of urban areas in Java and the patterns of electoral support for the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in these areas in the local parliamentary elections in 2014 and 2019. The data in this article were obtained through three techniques, namely online interviews, use of secondary data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics, and literature studies. The results of this study show that based on the composition of their socio-political organizations, urban areas in Java can be arranged into three types, namely (1) dominated by one nationalist or traditionalist Islamic social-political organization, (2) dominated by two social-political organizations based on nationalism and traditionalist Islam or vice versa, (3) not dominated by one or more socio-political organizations, or in other words, tend to be fragmented. In areas dominated by one or two socio-political organizations, either nationalist or traditionalist Islam or a combination of the two, support for PKS tends to be low or moderate. Meanwhile, in regions with fragmented socio-political organizations, PKS tends to gain moderate or high electoral support.