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30 Ibrahim Su an and Lee Tai De

Voting Patterns in Sarawak

BN Sarawak was con dent of retaining its parliamentary districts (and also
winning back a few more districts from the opposition) in Sarawak leading
up to GE14 (Dayak Daily 2017). Our conversations with researchers tasked
with soliciting voter-feedback as the election approached found that they
assumed only four urban districts then held by the DAP would be out of BN’s
reach. Merdeka Center did not conduct any surveys speci cally in Sarawak
in the lead-up to the election. However, as the counting of the ballots began
in the early evening of 9 May, it became apparent that voters in a number of
districts previously deemed safe had voted for PH or prominent independent
candidates. e BN’s loss of 12 districts in Sarawak and 15 in Sabah led
directly to BN’s capitulation as the federal ruling party.
In the wake of the election, BN Sarawak, comprising Parti Pesaka
Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS), Progressive
Democratic Party (PDP), and Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), left
the coalition and formed their own coalition called Gabungan Parti Sarawak
(GPS, Coalition of Sarawak Parties). In terms of overall performance, GPS
(previously BN Sarawak) lost about 6.4 per cent of the popular vote compared
to its performance in GE13, declining from 58.9 per cent attained in 2013 to
52.5 per cent in 2018.
As noted above, the electorate in Sarawak has been found to vote along
ethnic lines, as elsewhere in Malaysia. In the past several decades, the political
dichotomy in Sarawak has been drawn between Bumiputera and Chinese
voters. e former have tended overwhelmingly to support BN, while sizable
majorities of the latter have been supporting DAP and Pakatan since 2006.
e division of Sarawak parliamentary constituencies by voters’ ethnic
backgrounds is given in Table 2.11.
In GE14, however, a clear schism within the Bumiputera block of voters
became evident—Melanau and Malay voters remained steadfast in their support
for BN Sarawak (now GPS), while other largely non-Muslim Bumiputera,
such as the Bidayuh, Iban, and Orang Ulu communities, all registered sizable
declines in their support for GPS/BN Sarawak. is rift explains why the PH
parties were able to double their gains, from only 6 districts in GE13 to 12 in
GE14.
In order to work out these shifts in voting patterns, we compared the
GE14 results with those from Sarawak’s most recent state election, in 2016.
7
To put this election into context, the 2016 state election was held under the
popular chief minister, the late Adenan Satem, who campaigned on a platform
of Sarawak exclusivity and autonomy. Support for BN soared then, showing

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