ANATOMY OF THE LAYERS OF NU MEMBERS AND INDICATORS OF NU AFFAIRS, SURVEY ANALYSIS AND POLITICAL PREFERENCES
By: Adlan Daie
(Political Analyst, Secretary General of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) for Indramayu Regency)
Indramayu, July 30, 2026
Research and survey results from the “Alvara Research Center,” a survey institution that regularly conducts surveys on NU for the 2025 period, published data showing that NU members constitute 57%, equivalent to 140 million people, of the total Muslim population in Indonesia.
Unfortunately, the survey data above stops there and tends to be “glorified”—not to mention “capitalized,” as if the enormous number of NU members can be “managed” by NU’s structure and their political preferences controlled.
This short article aims to provide a more detailed look at the “descendants” of the 57% of NU members found in the Alvara Research survey. These members consist of three layers of NU membership and the following indicators of NU adherence:
First, NU members, referred to by Alfara Research as “Cultural Nahdlatul Ulama,” or “cultural NU,” comprising 29.2%, or 73 million, in this survey.
This is the “first layer” and the largest of the NU members identified in this survey. Indicators of NU adherence include their infrequent participation in NU organizational activities, but their religious practices are closely aligned with NU traditions.
They attend tahlilan (religious recitation) ceremonies when a neighbor dies, attend Friday night Yasinan (recitation of the Prophet’s birthday) or commemorations in their villages, visit graves, and other traditions closely associated with NU’s socio-religious identity.
What’s interesting about this survey’s findings is that the majority of NU members in this group are more interested in religious sermons by Ustad Abdus Shomad, Ustad Adi Hidayat, Gus Baha, and Gus Iqram—they are not structural NU figures, nor is Adi Hidayat a Muhammadiyah figure.
Second, the NU member group, referred to in this survey as “Engaged Nahdlatul Ulama,” is a group involved in organizational activities. They attend NU-initiated religious study groups such as Muslimat, Ansor, and Fatayat, as well as social and educational activities within the NU network.
This group represents 18% of NU members, or approximately 44 million. This group is crucial as a focal point for the organization. They serve as a link between the broad cultural base and the NU organizational structure. Their favorite preachers are Gus Baha and Gus Mus.
Third, the NU member group is called “Core Nahdlatul Ulama.” This proportion, at 9.4%, or 23 million, is the smallest but plays a very important role. If NU is like a large tree, then this group is the mainstay of NU.
The NU community within this group includes the mainstays of NU, the kiai (Islamic scholars), organizational administrators, Islamic boarding school activists, and young NU cadres who consciously uphold the “Aswaja” ideology and develop NU’s intellectual tradition.
Generationally, in the Alvara Research survey, Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) aligns more closely with the “Cultural Nahdlatul Ulama” (NU) community, and millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) lean more toward the “Engaged Nahdlatul Ulama” community.
Meanwhile, Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) and the “Booby Boomers” (born between 1946 and 1964) are largely part of the NU community known as “Core Nahdlatul Ulama”—the core driving force behind NU.
Demographically, in terms of socioeconomic context, the “Cultural Nahdlatul Ulama” (NU) membership is predominantly lower class, spread across both urban and rural areas. Those in urban areas are referred to in NGO terms as the “urban poor.”
The “Engaged Nahdlatul Ulama” (NU) membership is closely aligned with the urban middle class, while the “Core Nahdlatul Ulama” (NU) membership is predominantly concentrated in rural areas, centered on Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) in rural areas.
A crucial omission in this Alvara Research survey is the failure to measure the variance and indicators of tolerance levels among these three NU membership groups in the context of Islamic and national integration.
This is particularly important because Generation Z, within the “Cultural Nahdlatul Ulama” (NU) membership, has become more religiously engaged in the past ten years, following NU’s religious traditions but tending to be more lax in their religious ideology, potentially exposing them to intolerance.
In a political context, an interesting question is where the “political preferences” or political choices of the three groups of NU members are trending.
Of course, the number of NU members referred to here, in the sense of “voters” aged 17 and above, is not the same, but rather smaller, compared to the “population” of NU members, as described in the survey above.
The findings of the 2025 “Political Indicator” survey on the voting behavior of NU members in the 2024 election provide insight, a perspective related to the above question.
First, NU is a large social base of voters, but as an electoral base, it is not monolithic, but rather fragmented and not singular—tending to be “fluid.”
Second, as an electoral base, it depends political parties organize the social base of NU voters into an electoral base tactically and in layers, not because of NU’s structural endorsement.
Third, in the context of the National Awakening Party (PKB), the only party born from the NU’s womb, NU voters, although “fluid,” are more easily connected electorally to PKB, especially those in the “Engaged Nahdlatul Ulama” and “Core Nahdlatul Ulama” categories surveyed above.
This is PKB’s “exception” within the social base of NU voters, although it still requires intensive organizing within PKB activities.
(More details on the relationship between NU voters and PKB’s electoral base can be found in the author’s article titled “PKB’s Electoral Map and the Determination of NU’s Influence” in the “Kreatorjabar” media outlet, May 15, 2026).
The final question is, how will the 35th NU Congress in August 2026 design a program to provide solutions to the problems faced by the three categories of NU members mentioned above? Is the NU Congress merely a platform for political contestation?
Let’s wait and see. Wassalam.
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