May 5 electoral fog: What happened and why

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On May 10, 2013

WITH the dearth of available information on voting intentions from independent Gallup-type polls, it was a case of looking at actions speaking louder than words in finding one’s way through the fog in the run-up to last Sunday’s elections.

Richard Leete, fz.com

Delaying of elections, the weakening of the ruling Barisan Nasional, the late efforts to shore up support in historical strongholds and ceramah size, were among the indicators that foreshadowed the May 5 election outcome.

It had to be expected that the country’s evolving demographics (age, ethnic and socio economic composition, as well as location) would undoubtedly have an impact on voting behaviour.

Thus more than three quarters of the Peninsular Malaysia’s population now live in urban areas, up from around two thirds in 2000 – at the time of independence 75% of the population lived in rural areas. Among rural people, older Malays are the predominant demographic.

Younger, better educated and more affluent, the growing multi-ethnic urban middle-class, with upwardly-mobile aspirations, have values and perspectives that differ from the older generations, as well as heightened political consciousness.

A record 80% of the nation’s electorate came out to vote, numbering just over 11 million. Barisan Nasional’s share of the popular vote in Peninsular Malaysia was just 45.7%, compared with 53.3% for Pakatan. Yet in the peninsula it won five more parliamentary seats than the opposition.

The corresponding figures for Malaysia as a whole were Barisan 47.4% and Pakatan 50.9%, with Barisan winning 60% of the 222 seats – short of a targeted two-thirds majority. Barisan’s share of the votes was the lowest in the country’s 13 elections – the previous low being in the 1969 election when it was 48.4%.

So while Barisan lost the popular vote by a significant margin, its number of winning parliamentary candidates greatly exceeded that of Pakatan. Compared with 2008, Barisan’s share of the votes rose only in Kedah but fell significantly in every other state.

Conversely, outside of Kedah, Pakatan’s share of the votes jumped, including in Sabah and Sarawak. The most spectacular gains were in Johor and Terengganu, as well as in the Federal Territory of Labuan. The figures also implicitly suggest that the new younger generation of voters disproportionately voted for Pakatan.

Barring the Pakatan Rakyat coalition from having a voice in the mainstream media was a strategic mistake, it led to a news credibility gap among urbanites. And it denied the public opportunities for a competition of ideas, including through substantive head-to-head debate, on the real social and economic challenges facing the nation.

Building on its momentum from its 2008 election gains, it was the opposition with a greater canniness for the social media who were better able to exploit its advantages to win the hearts and minds of the young.

While Najib Razak contributed effectively among the political twiterati, it was the messages of Pakatan that dominated Twitersphere and the social networks.