Page 69 - Towards_a_New_Malaysia_The_2018_Election_and_Its_6146371_(z-lib.org)

54 Faisal S. Hazis

young Bersatu, which aspires to replace UMNO, did not do so well, losing
almost 80 per cent of the seats it contested. PAS also sprang a surprise, faring
much better than expected. Many pundits had predicted that the Islamic party
would be swept away in multicornered contests, but they managed to win 18
seats, mostly at the expense of PH’s Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah, National
Trust Party, formed after a split among elites in PAS), which only captured 9
seats. In terms of the popular vote, PH increased its electoral support from
22.9 per cent in GE13 to 36.1 per cent in GE14. PAS also increased its popular
vote, albeit marginally (from 24 per cent in 2013 to 25.6 per cent in 2018), yet
it did so while contesting in more than double the seats it had in 2013.
e results are widely considered to represent a changed political landscape.
For months leading up to GE14, surveys and polls had shown an unusually
high percentage of Malays who were undecided about their vote, leaving
pundits and pollsters puzzled as to what to expect, particularly given the new
choices available, thanks to rifts among elites in both UMNO and PAS, long
the two key alternatives for Malay voters. Chinese voters, on the other hand,
had been clear from the start that they remained overwhelmingly against
BN, especially UMNO; everyone could see that PH would once again sweep
Chinese-majority seats nationwide.
On 9 May, Malays decided to opt for change, voting overwhelmingly
against BN and UMNO. Combining the number of seats and votes won by
PH and PAS makes the BN’s loss of Malay support even more glaring. e
then-opposition—PH and PAS—won a total of 70 seats against BN’s 52,
while their combined share of the vote stood at 61.7 per cent. But the battle
for Malay votes speci cally was closer than those overall numbers imply, as
Table 3.4 indicates. e winners in more than 60 per cent of seats received less
than 50 per cent of the vote. Among parties, UMNO won the greatest number
of seats with only a plurality vote. In other words, UMNO could have lost up
to 35 more seats had there been fewer multicornered contests.
Most of the seats PH won had a higher proportion of non-Malay voters
than did those that BN and PAS won (see Table 3.5). About 70 per cent of
the Malay-majority seats that PH won have 30–49 per cent non-Malay voters.
Meanwhile, all 18 seats PAS won are more than 80 per cent Malay. ese seats
are mostly in the east coast and northern part of the peninsula. Eighty per
cent of the Malay seats UMNO won, too, have more than 70 per cent Malay
voters. According to Su an and Lee (see their chapter in this volume), 93 per
cent of Chinese and 83 per cent of Indian voters voted for PH, versus only 22
per cent of Malay voters. is gap explains why PH fared better in less heavily
Malay seats. All told, UMNO remains the most popular party among Malays,

This content downloaded from 139.80.253.0 on Fri, 06 Nov 2020 04:21:53 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms