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How Malaysia Voted in 2018

Ibrahim Su an and Lee Tai De

e results of the 14th Malaysian general election (GE14), held on 9 May 2018,
were quite unexpected. Many analysts and observers believed that di erences
among the disparate opposition parties, coupled with the incumbency
advantage of the Barisan Nasional (National Front, BN), would be more than
adequate to thwart the attempts of the resurgent opposition coalition, Pakatan
Harapan (Alliance of Hope, PH) led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Upon closer
examination, however, the defeat of BN and the victory of PH bear similarities
to other electoral breakthroughs that brought down long-dominant regimes. In
Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico (see, e.g., Solinger 2001), long-
repressed opposition forces took advantage of cleavages in the dominant ruling
party and prevailing public dissatisfaction with government performance to
overturn decades-long authoritarian rule. Studies that came out in the wake
of these landmark elections underlined factors that contribute towards the
success of opposition forces amidst a political environment stacked in favour
of the dominant party. ese factors, summed up, include regular elections,
the presence of opposition parties, continuous pressure for election reform,
endemic corruption and/or economic crisis, the emergence of a unifying leader
for the opposition, and splintering of the dominant party.
Of these many factors, it was the nal one—the splintering of the
dominant party—that had the strongest in uence on the outcome on voting
day in Malaysia. In the lead-up to the 2018 election, Malaysia’s two largest
Malay parties, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and Parti
Islam SeMalaysia (Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, PAS), both su ered ssures
that a ected their electoral performance. In 2015, leaders of a PAS faction
who lost in the party election had left PAS to form Parti Amanah Negara

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