The Effect of Political Socialization through Opinion Leader toward Political Participation of Borderline Citizens in 2019 General Election (Raihat-Atambua District Border District) Wida Nofiasari 1 , Ahmad Mulyana 2 , Henni Gusfa 3 {wnofiasari@gmail.com 1 , ahmadmulyana09@gmail.com 2 , henni.gusfa@gmail.com 3 } Universitas Mercu Buana, Indonesia 1, 2, 3 Abstract. In socializing politics in border region is quite difficult, the limitations of media entering the border areas and the limitations in the use of Indonesian have the public struggle to obtain information about the election. This condition is getting worse with the unstable internal political upheaval in the border region. Therefore, it takes the presence of an opinion leader figure to bridge the information gap between outsiders and rural. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of political socialization in the election process through opinion leaders on community participation in the border region of the Republic of Indonesia-Timor Leste, Raihat District, NTT in the 2019 elections. This research was a quantitative study using an explanatory approach. The results of the research that have been done show that political socialization, through opinion leaders has a significant influence on political participation. Keywords: Political Socialization, Opinion Leader, Political Participation. 1 Introduction On April 17, 2019, Indonesia held a General Election of Members of the House of Representative, Leadership of Political Party at Provincial, Assembly at Provincial and the Presidential Election simultaneously. Based on data from the General Election Commission, candidates who fought in the 2019 elections were 7,968 candidates for the House of Representative, 807 for Leadership of Political Party at Provincial, and two pairs of presidential candidates, namely Joko Widodo-K.H. Ma'ruf Amin and Prabowo Subianto- Sandiaga Salahuddin Uno. In the success of the election, the public needed adequate information so that the public could participate in the election, such as information about the permanent voter list to ascertain whether or not it had been registered as a condition for voting on Election Day as well as information about the rules in the electoral process. Therefore, political socialization was needed by the election organizers as a flow of information about the rules in the electoral process. Political socialization in the election is very important to support the success of the election itself, especially to suppress abstentions. In actualizing the ideals of social fairness or justice, effectiveness in political socialization requires an appropriate communication model to provide information about elections. Rogers in his book (Prof. Dr. Hafied Cangara, M.Sc 1998: 20) explains about this requirement in which communication is a relationship with the ICSS 2019, November 05-06, Jakarta, Indonesia Copyright © 2020 EAI DOI 10.4108/eai.5-11-2019.2292529