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How Malaysia Voted in 2018 39

towards PH, following the ethnic-Chinese community, which had been
supporting PH since 2006. BN Sarawak has since dissolved. Its successor
coalition, GPS, stands largely on the back of Muslim support and a portion of
the non-Muslim Bumiputera vote.
e results of GE14 likely will bring about a reordering of political
a liations among voters in Malaysia as PH attempts through patronage
and defections to wrest away voters hitherto a liated to BN. Parties such
as PAS will likely step up e orts to replace UMNO as the dominant party
among Malays, drawing on the Islamic identity that commonly underpins the
psyche of Malay voters. PH will attempt to contest in Malay electoral space
by drawing on support from younger voters, but its success will depend on
how well it ful ls voters’ aspirations and immediate practical needs, such as
maintaining economic growth and job-creation. Current patterns suggest that
no party, however, can take its support for granted.

Notes
1 is study of ethnic voting patterns focuses only on the 165 constituencies in
peninsular Malaysia because the ethnic composition in Sabah and Sarawak (varieties of
Bumiputera, indigenous groups) is fundamentally di erent from that of the peninsula,
where Malay, Chinese, and Indian are the main ethnic groups. Also, we do not include
early and postal ballots.
2 Merdeka Center’s analysis, utilized in the Selangor State Government’s lawsuit against
the Election Commission in 2016–17.
3 According to Article 10 of the 13th Schedule of the Federal Constitution, no fewer
than half of the members of the lower house must support the prime minister’s proposed
delimitation of constituencies.
4 PAS and UMNO cooperation had been a topic of political discussion since 2014,
when PAS openly declared its ‘taawun’ concept of working with any party for the
‘bene t of Islam’. While no formal arrangement was publicly evident, circumstantial
activities and statements fed suspicions (e.g., Bernama 2018; FMT 2017).
5 In 2018 PAS secured the support of an estimated 0.89 per cent of Chinese voters. is
result was in stark contrast to 2013, where the same PAS candidate, then running for
state representative, achieved 89.7 per cent of the Chinese vote in the state constituency
Meru.
6 We refer to a Merdeka Center survey dated October 2017, and discussion of it at a
public forum at the University of Nottingham Kuala Lumpur campus, in April 2018.
7 All Malaysian states except Sarawak presently hold state elections concurrent with
general elections. We were not able to run comparisons with results from GE13 given
limitations in the data; data to access and estimate ethnic electoral support were available
only for the 2016 state election and 2018 general election.

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