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The Golkar Party says it will tap into the booming popularity of social networking sites in the country to carry it to victory in the 2014 elections.

Indonesia has about 40 million Facebook users, the second most in the world after the United States, and a sizeable and growing Twitter population. Given the numbers most political parties are likely to make some attempt to embrace social networking as elections near.

While Golkar’s plans may not be unusual, its ambitions almost certainly are. According to Sharif Cicip Sutardjo, the Golkar deputy chairman, the party wants sites like Facebook to help it win 60 million votes in the 2014 presidential election.

It’s candidate in 2009, Jusuf Kalla, received only about 15 million votes. The Democratic Party and its candidate, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was the incumbent, won the election with about 73 million votes.

“We are targeting at least 60 millions votes in the 2014 election. By using social networks, we are sure that we can attract the attention of more than a hundred million voters,” said Sharif, who is overseeing the training of Golkar members in the use of social networking sites.

The party held a training program in Jakarta over the weekend for members from Sumatra, Java and Bali. Participants were given basic computer training and shown how to send out messages over Facebook and Twitter and communicate with voters.

Golkar was the ruling party for more than three decades during Suharto’s New Order and built up an extensive network of grassroots offices. But Sharif said for election success these days, it was important to be active on social networking sites, which can reach millions of potential voters at once.

He said 65 percent of Indonesians were between 25 and 45 years of age. Of this age group, he said, 70 percent are in the middle class and 75 percent have access to cellphones. Sharif said this represented a key block of potential voters who could be reached through Facebook and other sites.

“Today we hold direct meetings, but tomorrow we will have to do things differently because information technology is changing things so quickly,” he said.

The ruling Democratic Party is also looking at ways to increase its vote total in 2014, though it is taking a more low-tech approach at the moment.

The party’s secretary general, Edi Baskoro Yudhoyono, said the Democrats were stepping up their recruitment of members through things like leadership programs. These kinds of programs, he said, are aimed at building the future leaders of the party, whose present leaders have found themselves battered by a storm of graft allegations.

“With the regeneration programs, we want to find our future leaders,” he said.