Rolling coverage of election day in the world's third-largest democracy, as Indonesia decides its next president
Read the end-of-day summary
Jokowi and Prabowo both claim victory
Five reasons why Indonesia's presidential election matters
12.48am AEST
Voting in Indonesia's presidential election has finished with both sides claiming victory.
Quick counts sample polls counted to give an indication of the overall result suggested that former Jakarta governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, the favourite going into the election, had triumped. Jokowi told supporters that he and his running mate, Jusuf Kalla, had scored a victory.
12.39am AEST
My colleague Kate Lamb has filed her end-of-day report from Jakarta. You can read the full article here.
A historical presidential election in Indonesia was precariously balanced after both candidates declared themselves the winners, raising the prospect of a tense standoff in the Islamic worlds biggest democracy.
Just hours after the polls closed, Joko Widodo, who has made the fight against corruption and social injustice key policies, gave a live television address claiming victory, setting off scenes of jubilation among his supporters.
12.05am AEST
And then it was Prabowo's turn to claim victory. He told cheering supporters:
We're thankful that all the data showed that we, the number one candidate team Prabowo-Hatta, have received the support and mandate of the people of Indonesia.
For that, we, the red and white coalition, thank all the people of Indonesia who have given their trust to us, team number one Prabowo-Hatta.
11.57pm AEST
Here's the footage of Jokowi's almost-victory speech. He told supporters:
At this moment polls show that Jokowi and [running mate Yusuf Kalla] are winning.
We urge all Indonesians to preserve the purity of the people's aspirations and not try to challenge what the people are asking for.
11.45pm AEST
Outgoing president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says he will meet with both sets of candidates this evening:
Sesuai permintaan Capres/Cawapres, Presiden SBY akan terima Jokowi-JK dan Prabowo-Hatta, malam ini, di Cikeas, pd waktu yg berbeda.
11.24pm AEST
Social media has played a key role in this election campaign we've already seen that there have been close to 95 million tweets about it.
Now Facebook says there have been over 200 million interactions that's posts, comments, shares and likes on the Indonesian presidential election campaign. More than two-thirds of these were made by younger voters those aged 34 and under.
10.48pm AEST
Not quite a victory speech from Prabowo, but emphatically not a concession speech either:
"Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!" shouts Prabowo at the end of his TV speech
A tegas Prabowo having his turn on national TV to re-declare his position and await the final result.
10.42pm AEST
Prabowo Subianto is speaking on television channel TVOne (owned by a party supporter). He says his priority is democracy:
Millions of Indonesians have come to the various voting stations in an atmosphere that is happy and enthusiastic.
We have to be vigilant and we have to be concerned. We cannot live in a state where official authorities are not considered. In the end what matters is calculations that are legal and acknowledged by the Election Commission.
10.20pm AEST
According to data from Twitter, there have been nearly 95 million tweets about the Indonesian presidential elections since the start of the year. In the month to polling day, here's what Indonesian users who rank in the top five for Twitter use worldwide were tweeting about.
9.40pm AEST
Reuters sends this update on the unusual situation, with both sides claiming to have won. There have been no reports of violence following the disputed quick count results:
The standoff is unprecedented in Indonesia, which is holding only its third direct presidential election. In both the previous elections, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, now the outgoing president, won by a clear margin.
There have been concerns of violence once the result is known, a worry alluded to by Yudhoyono's administration.
9.31pm AEST
The outgoing president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has once again appealed for patience from both sides in the wake of the polling, reports my colleague Kate Lamb, who is in Jakarta:
SBY: Quick counts are not the final results.
Once again SBY urging for calm on both sides.
But the reality is Indonesia is in political limbo here.
9.27pm AEST
Anies Baswedan, a spokesman for the Jokowi campaign, has called on Prabowo and Hatta to behave like "statesmen", adding: "All credible survey institutes declared our victory."
9.21pm AEST
Jokowi tells his supporters that his rival Prabowo Subianto and Hatta Rajasa, Prabowo's vice-presidential candidate, are "patriots".
9.18pm AEST
Jokowi is speaking now at the Proklamasi monument in Jakarta. He says that today, Indonesia has decided its course".
Jokowi: All of us want a better Indonesia. An Indonesia in which people are healthy, smart, civilised, prosperous, and enjoy justice.
Jokowi digs hard at Prabowo: The real victory of people has been achieved through participation, not through mass mobilisation. (cont.)
Jokowi digs more at Prabowo: "It was achieved thorugh hard work, day and night, not by promising rewards"
Jokowi: However, our duty does not end today. In fact, its just begun. All the parts of the nation have to be united
9.00pm AEST
Despite uncertainty over the results, Jokowi supporters are preparing to celebrate.
Jokowi supporters gathering at Bunderan HI. Festive mood despite conflicting results. pic.twitter.com/Cz0xWSao3r
8.50pm AEST
Some indication of voter turnout from a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an Indonesian thinktank:
According @CSISIndonesia 1st time voters around 30% and turnout was abt 72%, though party loyalty appears low #IndonesiaElection2014
8.41pm AEST
Is the US embassy in Jakarta trolling Prabowo?
Jgn cepat marah! Mnurut @Harvard saat marah, risiko #stroke akan meningkat 3x lipat. http://t.co/y0zgiLCs0B
8.36pm AEST
Reuters has filed this update on the latest figures emerging from the quick counts:
Both candidates claimed victory in Indonesia's presidential election on Wednesday, suggesting there could be a drawn-out constitutional battle to decide who will next lead the world's third-largest democracy.
Just a few hours after voting closed, Jakarta governor Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said he had won, based on what are widely seen as independent quick counts of more than 90% percent of the votes.
8.28pm AEST
My colleague Kate Lamb, who is in Jakarta, sends this analysis:
Political analysts say that while the quick counts that suggest Prabowo has won are less credible than those that point to a Jokowi victory, the country will be in limbo until the elections commission makes its official announcement in late July.
Some of the counts backing Prabowo, says political analyst Yohannes Sulamain, have "very iffy numbers".
8.25pm AEST
This is Claire Phipps in the Guardian's London office, taking over from Michael Safi in Australia, as counting continues in the Indonesian presidential election.
You can read a summary of events so far here, as polls close and early sample counts have led both sides to declare victory.
8.07pm AEST
Soon I'll be handing over to my colleague Claire Phipps in London. But before I do, let's try to get to the bottom of these "quick counts", the unofficial results produced by pollsters and some media organisation, on which both presidential candidates are currently relying to declare victory.
Essentially, the numbers behind the quick counts are produced by observers, who are watching on as election officials publicly count each vote cast at the country's 400,000 poll booths. The observers are dispatched to a representative sample of poll booths and together count about 600,000 votes to produce an estimate of the result.
7.15pm AEST
If you're just joining us, here's the story so far from an extraordinary day of voting in what is arguably the largest single-day democratic contest in the world, the Indonesian presidential election.
6.55pm AEST
In response to Joko Widodo's announcement that, based on quick counts, he was likely to be elected Indonesia's seventh president, his opponent Prabowo Subianto has gone on television to make his own declaration of victory. It's an extraordinary turn, writes Kate Lamb from Jakarta:
The Indonesian presidential just took a crazy turn with Prabowo Subianto making a live address on TVOne, declaring that based on other quick counts, he had received a mandate to lead. In a brief address he thanked the Indonesian populace for giving him their trust and support.
The quick counts are being televised by two stations that have been clearly pro-Prabowo throughout the campaign.
6.40pm AEST
While Prabowo and Jokowi's camps continue to duel over who has the edge in early, unofficial polls, catch up on our curtain-raiser to Wednesday's vote.
On Joko Widodo, an outsider and wildcard, who promises a clean break from the past:
Raised in a ramshackle slum area in the central Java town of Solo, he developed a successful medium-scale furniture business before becoming the local mayor and, most recently, the governor of Jakarta.
"From his time as governor, we can already see the 'Jokowi effect'," says the Jakarta-based film-maker and Jokowi supporter Joko Anwar. "Just months after he became governor we could no longer bribe government officials because they were scared they would get 'Jokowi-ed'."
"We don't want to become an enslaved nation, we don't want to become a lackey nation, we don't want to be trampled on by other nations," Prabowo told his supporters at a rally on May Day this year. "Prabowo will not be your lackey, Indonesia will not be your lackey "
Backed by his tycoon brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo, and most of the country's TV stations, this is the third time Prabowo, 62, will run for president and he is getting better at delivering patriotic messages that appeal to the masses.
5.54pm AEST
The latest update from my colleague Kate Lamb in Jakarta:
After several hours of the polls swinging wildly in Indonesia's extremely tight presidential election, frontrunner Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, has declared that he is the outright winner. Referring to the results of a reputable quick count by CSIS, which puts Jokowi in front with 52.74% against Prabowo's 47.26 % after more than 80% of the a sample vote counted.
"Based on the quick count, Jokowi and JK [Jusuf Kalla, his running mate] have won," Joko told a press conference, "We ask for the people of Indonesia to guard the purity of the peoples aspiration, and so that nobody can try to stain [it]".
5.44pm AEST
Kate Lamb reports that Jokowi has taken the microphone at a press conference in Jakarta and declared that "based on the quick count", specifically the CSIS count below that showed his 5-point lead, "Jokowi-JK has won".
Update: Singapore's Straits Times is reporting Prabawo's camp as saying the election is still too early to call.
5.34pm AEST
The former Indonesian president, who is chairwoman of Widodo's party, is live on television calling the election for Jokowi.
It comes as the Jakarta-based CSIS reports that with 85% of its Quick Count sample tallied, Jokowi has a 5-point lead.
5.17pm AEST
Indonesia is living up to its reputation as one of the world's most social media-savvy countries in the world, with six of the top ten hashtags currently trending on Twitter related to the presidential poll.
Among them are:
4.55pm AEST
Exit polls are showing varied results, but the respected Jakarta-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has released its own poll based on interviews with 8,000 respondents across the country.
It shows Jokowi in the lead with 45.1% to Prabowo's 42.2%.
4.45pm AEST
Whoever wins, says Australian National University associate professor Greg Healy, Indonesia is likely to be "far less inclined to forgive Australia any of its sort of domestically driven, political policy initiatives towards Indonesia".
He also told the ABC that Prabawo was likely to be a more difficult president to deal with.
[Jokowi] is a more stable person in his personality and he is more pragmatic and I think more measured. Prabowo Subianto is a much more difficult person to predict because his range of behaviour is far wider and he is extremely temperamental.
4.17pm AEST
The clock has struck 1pm in Jakarta, bringing to a close Indonesia's brief 7-hour polling window. Kate Lamb, who is in Indonesia, reports that exit polls have swung wildly in favour of Prabowo as the sample size increases. With 11% of exit polls counted, it is now Prabowo in the lead by 13 points, confirming predictions this race is likely to be a nail-biter.
The counting of the votes has also commenced, Kate says, screened live on Indonesia television:
On live TV voting officials are holding up ballot papers one by one, shouting the results, 'satu' or 'dua' (one, for Prabowo, or two, for Jokowi), the counting happening in the open for everyone to see - even though it is believed there has been 'money politics' or vote buying on both sides.
3.54pm AEST
With polls in Jakarta closing in 15 minutes, Indonesia news outlet Kompas is reporting that a sample of early exit polls show Jokowi leading Prabowo by a hefty 19-point margin, 59.92% to Prabowo's 40.48%. That's only based on a small sample, however, just 8%, so expect the numbers to change.
Exit polls quoted by another local news outlet, Metro TV, have Jokowi with a narrower lead, 43.65%, against Prabowo with 40.17%.
3.43pm AEST
3.25pm AEST
I've just finished chatting with Kate Lamb on the ground in Jakarta, that interview will be up shortly.
In the meantime, my colleague Helen Davidson alerts me that Indonesia's democratic exercise has drawn praise from the prime minister of neighbouring Papua New Guinea, Peter O'Neill.
2.37pm AEST
Booths in Indonesia will close at 1pm Jakarta time, in about an hour-and-a-half, which means they're already shut in the country's easternmost provinces of Papua and East Nusa Tenggara.
Unlike most democracies, who leave polls open for as long as possible, Indonesian booths accept voters from just 7am to 1pm on election day.
1.55pm AEST
In tried and true election-day fashion, Joko Widodo casts his vote for the cameras beside his wife, Iriana, this morning in Jakarta.
1.43pm AEST
The most recent polls have this election too close to call, but it wasn't always this way. After he announced as a presidential candidate in March, Jokowi surged to a mammoth lead over the field, around 30-points ahead of Subianto, his nearest competitor.
That lead has been eroded to just 2.7% by months of campaigning marred by smears against the frontrunner, including accusations that Jokowi is secretly of Chinese origin and changed his name from Oey Hong Liong. Rumours such as these are flatly untrue, but deeply damaging in a country that still simmers with resentment towards its Chinese minority.
1.17pm AEST
On Monday my colleague Kate Lamb filed this excellent primer giving five reasons why today's election in the world's largest Muslim-majority country is an event of global significance.
Particularly interesting is the way Indonesia stands as a rebuke to those who say Islam is not compatible with democracy. As Kate writes:
With a population of 240 million people, 90% of whom are Muslim, is often held up, alongside Turkey, as an example of the compatibility of democracy and Islam. Though the Middle East may be the centre of gravity for the Islamic world, Indonesia has more Muslims than that entire region. Since the fall of Suharto, when both political and religious freedoms were curtailed, democracy and Islam have thrived. Muslims in Indonesia predominately practise a moderate form of Islam, and during recent years the government has worked hard to cripple extremist groups, such as those behind the 2002 Bali bombings. Indonesia's constitution protects religious freedom but under Yudhoyono whose coalition includes Islamic-based parties religious intolerance against Christians, Shia Muslims and Ahmadis has been on the rise.
1.03pm AEST
Greetings and welcome to our coverage of the world's third-largest democratic contest, as some 190 million Indonesians go to the polls to elect a new president, only the second to be elected directly by the voters since the country extricated itself from authoritarian rule in 1998.
Polls are predicting an extremely tight contest, with former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo - known everywhere as Jokowi - the favourite by a narrow margin, just 4% according to a Roy Morgan poll conducted seven days ago. A more recent polls whittled that lead down every further, to just 2.7%.
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