Party Identification in the Voting Behavior of Tamil Indonesians in 2015 Medan Mayoral Election

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to define the party identification on Tamil Indonesians living in Medan. Tamil Indonesians, who originated from Tamil Nadu, one of the states in the Southern part of India, has established a community that settled in Medan since the occupation era. Thus, since then acculturation has taken place and shaped the identity of the Tamil descendants in Medan. As a part of Indonesian citizens, they took part in exercising their rights to vote in 2015 Medan Mayoral Election.

This study was conducted in Medan in 2018 by means of interviews and questioners. To elaborate the main objective of this study, the theory of voting behavior from psychological approaches were used as the theoretical framework. The findings of this research are as follow: there were few political parties that Tamil Indonesians in Medan could be identified with, and they were Gerindra, Golkar, and PDIP. The findings of this study affirm the notion which started the psychological approach in the study of voting behavior as even by that time sociological approach was no longer deemed as sufficient in explaining voting behavior.