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10 Meredith L. Weiss and Faisal S. Hazis

Beyond breadth in topical foci, we also sought a mix of approaches to the
study of elections. e chapters employ a mix of methods, from statistics to
ethnography, and extend beyond the conventional ambit of political science.
We let the nature of the research question and the academic background of
the researcher determine how each contributor approached their analysis. at
said, the chapters in Part I, which home in on voting trends in GE14, rely
largely on quantitative data, allowing both a macro look at election results
as well as an examination of speci c segments; other chapters rely more on
qualitative data and the nuance these allow, or combine both quantitative and
qualitative approaches.
We seek with this volume not merely to tell the story of a Malaysian
election—however consequential a moment it was—but rather, to use this
election as an entry point into core debates about Malaysian political ideas,
identities, and behaviour. Our goal is a volume of interest to scholars of other
electoral-authoritarian or transitional regimes. Toward that end, we have
organized the volume into three parts. e rst part, including contributions
by Ibrahim Su an and Lee Tai De on how best to interpret the results overall,
Faisal Hazis on the conditions that led to the dominant party’s fall among
Malay voters, Helen Ting on cross-ethnic vote-pooling and the implications
for ethnic-minority voters’ choices, and Johan Saravanamuttu on the rise
of Pakatan Harapan, o ers a substantially quantitative assessment of what
happened: who voted how, and what patterns and trends the data reveal.
e second section digs deeper, for a more qualitative assessment of
key issues, campaign strategies and mobilization. Here we have analyses by
Ross Tapsell of parties’ adoption of ‘big-data’ tactics for microtargeted voter
outreach; Haris Zuan on changing modes of political participation among
Malaysian youth and how parties have pursued that critical bloc; Ahmad
Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali on the extent to
which racial and religious identities and interests (still) drive mobilization and
voting, across Malaysian communities; David Kloos on the speci c challenges
faced by Malay-Muslim women running on Islamist platforms, as they juggle
expectations of projecting both professionalism and maternalism; and Hew
Wai Weng on the varieties of political Islam that parties promote among
di erent segments of the Malay-Muslim community.
Finally, we look to the future, to consider where Malaysia is going and, more
systematically, what this case suggests. First, as the new Malaysian government
embarks upon reforms, Wong Chin Huat probes whether rst-past-the-post
voting is appropriate to ethnically plural polities such as Malaysia, even if
cleansed of malpractice such as gerrymandering and malapportionment.
Meredith Weiss then concludes the volume by asking what actually constitutes

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