Populism has been evolving across the globe. Knowledge of the ways and degree to which political actors in Asian democracy exploited anti-establishment views, secular nationalism and Islamism as ideational elements when they established populist political communication strategies for local elections has, however, been under-developed. Focusing on such issues, this work selects gubernatorial candidates who ran in Indonesia s 2018 gubernatorial elections as cases, using extracts from materials they posted on their Facebook pages. The findings are as follows. Candidates did not merely advocate anti-establishment views, but also adopted secular nationalism and Islamism as ideational-populist elements for developing populist political communication strategies. Those who exploited anti-economic elites favoured establishing secular nationalist and Islamic-based populist political communication strategies inclusively. Those who propagated anti-economic, anti-political and anti-bureaucratic elites instead greatly preferred advancing an Islamic populist political communication strategy. However, through employing such efforts, only few succeeded in these elections. © The Author(s) 2020.