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A deluge of scandals implicating political parties in recent months will discourage people from voting in the upcoming parliamentary elections, a survey published on Monday has found.

According to the latest survey by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which queried more than 2,000 people in 23 provinces last week, nearly 50 percent of respondents said they were undecided or would not vote for any party if elections were held today.

That was because people had lost faith in them.

“This anti-political party attitude will not only hurt the parties but also Indonesia’s democracy as a whole,” CSIS researcher Sunny Tanuwidjaja told a news conference in Jakarta on Monday.

The survey found the Democratic Party had fallen the furthest because of a series of high-profile scandals, but it was still more supported than other parties.

Out of the more than 50 percent of respondents who said they intended to vote in parliamentary elections, 12.6 percent preferred the Democrats, 10.5 liked Golkar and 7.8 percent favored the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

“From 2009, votes for the Democrats dropped the most, falling 8.25 percent,” CSIS researcher Philips J. Vermonte said.

The survey, however, indicated the Democrats’ drop in popularity did not automatically benefit other parties. The consensus among the reluctant voters, it found, was that all parties were the same. The lack of a viable alternative to the Democrats thus explained why that party was still tops, Philips said.

“This condition actually opens opportunity for new parties to emerge because if there is a party that the disappointing voters see will accommodate their aspirations then this party could gain votes,” he said.

Philips said the survey also showed that if the government could do a better job — get tough on corruptors, provide more jobs to the poor, develop rural areas — then the ruling party could recover some of its lost support.

The survey was consistent with previous polls that also showed a popularity drop for the Democrats in the wake of big graft scandals. The party won the 2009 elections with more than 20 percent of the vote.

A survey by the Indonesia Survey Circle (LSI) published last week showed the party had fallen to third place behind Golkar and the PDI-P.

Out of 1,200 respondents, only 13.7 percent said they would vote for the Democrats while 18.9 percent and 14.2 percent said they would pick Golkar and the PDI-P, respectively.

According to recent statements by some analysts, media reports speculating on the involvement of Democrats in a graft case surrounding the construction of the Southeast Asian Games athletes’ village in Palembang has weakened the party’s prospects in upcoming elections.

Political analyst Yunarto Wijaya said he doubted the CSIS’s finding that the Democratic Party was still more popular than Golkar and the PDI-P, but he agreed that apathy toward the government was increasing.

The margin between the Democrats and Golkar was slight and could be within the margin of error, he said.

“But it’s true that people are becoming more and more disappointed with political parties because they only see scandals and conflict among them,” Yunarto said. The worsening state of affairs, he added, could endanger the country’s democracy, hailed by the international community as the region’s most successful.