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6 Meredith L. Weiss and Faisal S. Hazis

(note the data the chapters in Part I present), even if internally crosscut by other
dimensions (for instance, Su an and Lee’s analysis of generational patterns,
4
or Hew Wai Weng’s di erentiation between urban middle-class and more rural
Islamist Malay voters). at said, GE14 demonstrates the extent to which the
dominant model and its core assumptions fall short in contemporary Malaysia.
e ethnic factor has surely long been overstated.
is election demonstrated the limits of a communal framework even
at the most basic level. Malay voters, for instance, as several chapters here
illustrate, split along lines of region, approach to religion, and possibly
socioeconomic class. Moreover, multiethnic coalitions and constituencies
change political alignments. Even if opportunistic politicians return to race-
targeted messages at moments, the more inclusive messages they are bound
also to o er can still percolate down and become rei ed through practice, as
Helen Ting’s discussion of cross-ethnic vote-pooling, drawing on the work of
Donald Horowitz (e.g., Horowitz 1989) implies. Meanwhile, candidate e ects
in various constituencies may override these categories altogether, given the
extent to which a personal vote matters in Malaysia. David Kloos, for instance,
explores how important personal demeanour and impressive credentials are for
Muslim female politicians in particular, even as voters also look to presence
and performance on the ground, during the campaign and after elections. e
qualities voters seek in their politicians may run at cross-purposes—in this
case, both professional and matronly attributes—making it di cult to be sure
which aspect turned a given vote.
Indeed, these questions demand critical assessment of how we study
political identities and behaviour. Survey data are inconsistently reliable even
where researchers have, for instance, painstakingly tested for skew from coded
terms or from priming respondents through question order; however well-
designed the survey, respondents may be cagey, noncommittal, or simply hard
to characterize with a data-point. Surveys in a place like Malaysia may be
all the more problematic, with but a handful of survey-research rms and
a limited corpus of accumulated ndings on which to build and question-
smithing to re ne. For instance, we have limited large-N information on how
varieties of Malaysian voters balance ethnic, economic, ideological, or other
considerations in de ning themselves or their vote-choices. We know, for
instance, from surveys over time, that Malay voters tend to prioritize an ethnic
over a national identity, in contrast to non-Malay voters (e.g., Merdeka Center
2017; Parkaran 2018)—yet it is not obvious what that nding might mean
for voting, particularly with less than starkly di erentiated options (e.g., more
than one party promoting political Islam, or Malay rights, or redistributive

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