The Function of Electoral Debate in Building Candidate's Preferability Functional Analysis on Candidate debate in the Second Round of 2017 Jakarta Governor Election

Candidate debate has been a tradition in democratic countries, including Indonesia. Since the first direct presidential election in 2004 and direct local head election in 2005, the national election commission has held hundreds of candidate debates at national, provincial and municipality/regency level. Despites of its growing practice, the scholars' attention to candidate or electoral debate as a research object is still limited. This research aims to contribute in providing academic perspective on electorate debate in Indonesia. This research centers around main question: how does the candidate use electoral debate to build his or her preferability by acclaiming, attacking and defending? This study applied the functional analysis and uses content analysis method in analyzing debate between the candidate pair of Basuki Tjahadja Purnama-Djarot Saifullah and Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno in the second round of 2017 Jakarta local election, conducted in April 12, 2017. In examining the question, this research tests the hypothesis of functional analysis. First, candidate uses acclaims more frequently that attacks, and attacks more than defense. Second, candidates make more statements related to policy than to character. The result of this research confirms those hypotheses. First, the candidates mainly build their preferability by acclaiming, rather than attack and defense. Second, in building their preferability, candidates address more policy rather than character related topics. This research concludes that candidate debate in the second round of Jakarta governor election can be seen as an ideal debate from the perspective of functional analysis where the candidates mainly build their preferability through acclaim and focus more on policy rather than character.