Election Forecast for Pakatan Harapan in Peninsular Malaysia (GE14)
1. Introduction
On January 10th 2018 a detailed listing of the 165 seats being contested by Pakatan Harapan (PH) component parties in Peninsular Malaysia was published in The Star and Malaysiakini (https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/408114). Based on this listing, the seat division is as follows:
- 52 seats contested by PPBM
- 51 seats contested by PKR
- 35 seats contested by DAP
- 27 seats contested by AMANAH
This report provides an overview of the seats contested by component parties in PH, the winning odds and forecasted results for each seat under a number of different scenarios. Analysis was performed based on the 2017 1st Quarter (Q1) electoral roll, 2016 3rd Quarter (Q3) electoral roll, State and Federal seat results from the 13th General Election (GE13) and individual historical voting patterns from GE12 (2008) and GE13 (2013).
A copy of this report in PDF format can be downloaded at https://drive.google.com/file/d/16glv67fwRybQxdKS7X1fFC9R1SN0TSGy/view?usp=sharing
The Most Followed Twitter Users in Malaysia (Oct 2017)
Since 2014 we have been building up a database of profiled Twitter users in Malaysia. We currently have over 630,000 profiled user accounts that are location-based. What this means is that we can analyse opinions and interests not just by state, but by area (e.g. cities, constituencies, campuses, malls, suburbs / taman). We have demonstrated the application of this database for opinion analysis (browse here) and by-elections (link). We are currently working on improving the level of detail for our profiles and are now sharing part of our research results with the public.
Using a sample of 24,677 users from our database, we collected their lists of Twitter ‘friends’ (user accounts that people follow). This resulted in a list of 2.07 million users. This list was then used to summarise the top 207,500 most-followed users by users in Malaysia.
The Top 10 most-followed Twitter users are below:
| Rank | @ScreenName | Name | Market Reach (%) |
| 1 | 39.385 | ||
| 2 | Khairykj | Khairy Jamaluddin | 35.665 |
| 3 | 9GAG | 9GAG | 32.577 |
| 4 | Matluthfi90 | Matluthfi90 | 27.459 |
| 5 | yunamusic | Yuna Zarai | 25.064 |
| 6 | 501Awani | Astro AWANI | 23.982 |
| 7 | NajibRazak | Mohd Najib Tun Razak | 23.625 |
| 8 | waktuSolatKL | Waktu Solat WP KL | 22.653 |
| 9 | SantapanMinda | Santapan Minda | 22.134 |
| 10 | ustazharidrus | Ust Azhar Idrus | 21.818 |
Market reach is defined as the percentage of users in Malaysia who follow that Twitter user. Based on this list, Khairy Jamaluddin (MP for Rembau, Minister of Youth and Sports, UMNO Youth Leader) is both the most-followed person and most-followed Malaysian in the country. But his market reach is only 35.665% of users in Malaysia. This shows that no single user on Twitter ‘owns’ the Malaysian market. Because we are using profiled users, the possibility of fake followers (or phantoms, fake accounts etc.) is a non-issue.
The Top 10 users have a combined market reach of 82.25%. Most Twitter users in Malaysia have a market reach that would be considered small. But a small market reach does not mean that a tweet has no chance of going viral. Due to the high degree of connectivity between Twitter users plus the Twitter Search factor, there is always a chance for a tweet getting retweeted and spread throughout the network.
Using the data that we collected, we performed a network analysis on how the most-followed Twitter users are connected to each other based on their followers. For this analysis we used the top 4,704 users. This covers all user accounts followed by users in Malaysia with a minimum market reach of 0.61%.
Users that have a shared appeal (affinity) will have overlapping audiences, which is equal to strong connections if the overlap is high. For example, users that tweet primarily about football will draw interest from other people who like football.
Based on the network analysis we generated a map showing clusters of users with a strong affinity for each other. Based on where they are in the map, you can see the affinity that different popular users have with each other. Users with a greater market reach are shown in a larger font, coloured from a scale ranging from blue (least popular) to orange to red (most popular).
The full-size version can be viewed at our Flickr page here.
At a glance you can see that the top users are close to each other where @Khairykj and @instagram are visible. As stated earlier the Top 10 users have a combined market reach of 82.25%. Despite the fact that these users don’t tweet about the same topics, their proximity to each other is due to their mass market appeal.
How Political Interest is Divided by Language on Facebook in Malaysia (July 2017)
1. Introduction
This document provides a measurement of the political party interests of Facebook users in Malaysia. This is based on public information collected from Facebook.
Some important notes to remember when interpreting Facebook figures:
- Total population refers to Facebook users aged 13 years and above.
- Potential voters refer to Facebook users aged 21 years and above.
- Youth refers to Facebook users aged 13 – 20 years.
- Gender breakdown figures do not always add up to the total. This may be due to Facebook users not sharing their gender, and also due to rounding errors in statistics provided by Facebook. State breakdown figures also do not add up to the total due to the same rounding errors.
- Detailed statistics on Putrajaya are not available due to the small number of users in the territory.
- Figures provided by Facebook are estimates. Some inaccuracies are to be expected, e.g. the sum of state totals not being equal to the national total.
- Facebook users residing in Malaysia are not necessarily Malaysian citizens.
- Interest in a topic is equal to the number of users expressing interest in a topic.
- To measure interest we used a combination of Facebook Interests (a collection of interests, activities, groups, pages, status updates and job history identified by a common term determined by Facebook e.g. ‘United Malays National Organization’) and specific Group and Page names (e.g. Friends of BN).
- These are used to collect the number of users interested in a given party/coalition/politician/group. For example, a user mentioning a party name in a status update; sharing a news link related to the party or sharing content from a party-affiliated page would count towards the total interest in that party
- Interest in a political party does not indicate support for the party, only awareness
- It is currently assumed that interest in PAS includes some interest in AMANAH as PAS leaders and members migrated to AMANAH
- Audience refers to the population of users that express interest in a topic. Unless indicated, the audiences used in this report are composed of potential voters (users in Malaysia aged 21 years and above).
- Based on our research to date, Pages that are of type ‘politician’ are not always included under related Facebook Topics. For example, not all ‘Tony Pua’ (MP, PJ Utara, DAP) Page likes are included under interest in ‘DAP’. However, because Facebook does not make Topic details available we cannot easily determine which politicians, if any, were included.
- Statistics on the Opposition primarily refer to component parties of the former Pakatan Rakyat – PKR, PAS and DAP. This includes the ‘Pakatan’ brand name.
- July 2017 statistics were collected during a 2-week period in July 2017. As such there may be some differences in totals for political parties when comparing different sections due to changes in collected statistics.
- Statistics on the 2017 1st Quarter electoral roll are estimates based on published changes to the 2016 gazetted roll. Ethnic breakdown for new voters are based on profiling methods that we developed and should be considered estimates.
2. List of Acronyms
The following table shows a list of acronyms used in this document.
| Acronym | Full name |
| PR | Pakatan Rakyat |
| PH | Pakatan Harapan |
| BN | Barisan Nasional |
| UMNO | United Malays National Organisation |
| GERAKAN | Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (also known as PGRM) |
| MCA | Malaysian Chinese Association |
| MIC | Malaysian Indian Congress |
| PBB | Parti Pesaka Bumiputra Bersatu Sarawak |
| PKR | Parti Keadilan Rakyat |
| DAP | Democratic Action Party |
| AMANAH | Parti Amanah Negara |
| PAS | Parti Islam Se-Malaysia |
| PPBM | Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia |
3. An Overview of Malaysia’s Facebook User Population (July 2017)
3.1 Division by Age and Gender
There are currently 24 million Facebook users in Malaysia. 54.17% are men and 45.83% are women.
From this total, 19 million users are aged 21 years and above. 52.63% are men and 47.37% are women. These are the potential voters on Facebook.
The chart below shows the population distribution by age group. The largest segment of the population is aged between 21 – 30 years.
The table below shows the distribution of Facebook users by state, sorted by the total population:
| State | Total (13+ yrs) |
Male (%) | Female (%) | % of Malaysia |
| Perlis | 40,000 | 52.50 | 47.50 | 0.17 |
| Labuan | 170,000 | 52.35 | 46.47 | 0.71 |
| Kelantan | 290,000 | 51.72 | 44.83 | 1.21 |
| Terengganu | 370,000 | 51.35 | 48.65 | 1.54 |
| Negeri Sembilan | 380,000 | 55.26 | 47.37 | 1.58 |
| Melaka | 390,000 | 53.85 | 46.15 | 1.63 |
| Pahang | 500,000 | 54.00 | 48.00 | 2.08 |
| Kedah | 610,000 | 54.10 | 47.54 | 2.54 |
| Perak | 880,000 | 51.14 | 48.86 | 3.67 |
| Penang | 990,000 | 51.52 | 48.48 | 4.13 |
| Sabah | 1,000,000 | 53.00 | 47.00 | 4.17 |
| Sarawak | 1,100,000 | 51.82 | 45.45 | 4.58 |
| Johor | 1,900,000 | 57.89 | 45.79 | 7.92 |
| KL + Selangor | 15,000,000 | 56.67 | 42.67 | 62.50 |
The table below shows the distribution of Facebook users by state aged 21 years and above.
| State | Total (>=21 yrs) | Male (%) | Female (%) | % of Msia (>=21 yrs) | % of State (>=21 yrs) |
| Perlis | 33,000 | 51.52 | 48.48 | 0.17 | 82.50 |
| Labuan | 140,000 | 52.14 | 45.71 | 0.74 | 82.35 |
| Kelantan | 230,000 | 52.17 | 43.48 | 1.21 | 79.31 |
| Terengganu | 290,000 | 51.72 | 48.28 | 1.53 | 78.38 |
| Negeri Sembilan | 310,000 | 54.84 | 48.39 | 1.63 | 81.58 |
| Melaka | 320,000 | 53.13 | 46.88 | 1.68 | 82.05 |
| Pahang | 400,000 | 55.00 | 47.50 | 2.11 | 80.00 |
| Kedah | 490,000 | 53.06 | 46.94 | 2.58 | 80.33 |
| Perak | 710,000 | 50.70 | 47.89 | 3.74 | 80.68 |
| Sabah | 790,000 | 53.16 | 46.84 | 4.16 | 79.00 |
| Penang | 840,000 | 50.00 | 47.62 | 4.42 | 84.85 |
| Sarawak | 840,000 | 53.57 | 46.43 | 4.42 | 76.36 |
| Johor | 1,600,000 | 55.00 | 45.00 | 8.42 | 84.21 |
| KL + Selangor | 12,000,000 | 56.67 | 44.17 | 63.16 | 80.00 |
Based on the last column we can see that Sarawak, Terengganu, Kelantan and Sabah have the highest proportion of young users (below 21 years).
As of 2017 Quarter 1, an estimated 21.64% of registered voters reside in KL and Selangor. In the National Census 2010, 24.35% of Malaysia’s citizens and 24.11% of Malaysia’s total population reside in KL and Selangor.
However according to statistics from Facebook, 62.50% of Facebook users in Malaysia reside in KL and Selangor. This includes Malaysians and foreigners who live there. This is an increase from 50% in August 2016.
The heavy concentration of users in KL and Selangor means that trending content in Malaysia in terms of shares and likes might not reflect what the country is talking about. When it comes to the analysis of interest in local issues such as politics, it is therefore important to evaluate the interests of users in different states.
3.2 Division by Language
The chart below shows the number of potential voters by language used on Facebook, based on information they have shared with Facebook:
Hindi/Tamil = users who use Hindi or Tamil. Only 20 thousand users use both languages
If we added the totals together there would be 30 million users. Given that there are only 19 million Facebook users, there is an overlap between users from each group. Many users speak multiple languages.
93% of potential voters on Facebook use English, Malay or Chinese languages. Because of this high coverage, we were able to design a set of formulas to break up these users into smaller, identifiable groups based on different combinations of spoken languages. The population of users in these groups can then be estimated. The results of this analysis are in the table below:
| Language Group | Code | % of Population (>=21 years) | Description |
| Bilingual Malay + English | BME | 40.26 | Users who speak Malay and English. May also speak other languages except Chinese. |
| English Only / English + Other languages | EO | 19.21 | Users who speak English but do not speak Malay or Chinese. May also speak other languages. |
| Malay Only / Malay + Other languages | MO | 13.95 | Users who speak Malay but do not speak English or Chinese. May also speak other languages. |
| Bilingual Chinese + English | BCE | 12.37 | Users who speak both Chinese and English. May also speak other languages except Malay. |
| Other Languages Only | OTH | 7.11 | Users who do not speak English, Malay or Chinese |
| Chinese Only / Chinese + Other languages | CO | 3.42 | Users who speak Chinese but do not speak English or Malay. May also speak other languages. |
| Bilingual Malay + Chinese | BMC | 1.84 | Users who speak both Malay and Chinese. May also speak other languages except English. |
| Trilingual Malay + English + Chinese | TRI | 1.84 | Users who speak English, Malay and Chinese. May also speak other languages. |
The proportion of each group is summarised in the chart below.
From the chart we can observe that:
- The Bilingual Malay + English (BME) group is both the largest group of users and largest subset of Malay speakers in the country
- Most Malay speakers on Facebook understand English
- The Bilingual Chinese + English (BCE) group is the 4th largest group of users and largest subset of Chinese speakers in the country
- Most Chinese speakers on Facebook understand English
- A minority of users (3.68%, 700 thousand) speak combinations of Malay and Chinese
Recent Trends in Political Party Interest on Facebook in Malaysia (Aug 2016)
1. Introduction
This document provides a measurement of the political party interests of Facebook users in Malaysia. This is based on public information collected from Facebook.
Some important notes to remember when interpreting Facebook figures:
- Total population refers to Facebook users aged 13 years and above.
- Potential voters refer to Facebook users aged 21 years and above.
- Youth refers to Facebook users aged 13 – 20 years.
- Gender breakdown figures do not add up to the total. This may be due to Facebook users not sharing their gender, and also due to rounding errors by Facebook when dealing with specific age groups. State breakdown figures also do not add up to the total, due to the same rounding errors.
- Figures provided by Facebook are estimates. Some inaccuracies are to be expected.
- Facebook users residing in Malaysia are not necessarily Malaysian citizens.
- Interest in a topic is equal to the number of users expressing interest in a topic.
- To measure interest we used a combination of Facebook Interests (a collection of interests, activities, groups, pages, status updates and job history identified by a common term determined by Facebook e.g. ‘United Malays National Organization’) and specific Group and Page names (e.g. Friends of BN).
- These are used to collect the number of users interested in a given party/coalition/politician/group. For example, a user mentioning a party name in a status update; sharing a news link related to the party or sharing content from a party-affiliated page would count towards the total interest in that party
- Interest in a political party does not indicate support for the party, only awareness
- It is assumed that interest in PAS includes interest in AMANAH as PAS leaders migrated to AMANAH
- Audience refers to the population of users that express interest in a topic.
- Based on our research to date, Pages that are of type ‘politician’ are not always included under related Facebook Topics. For example, not all ‘Tony Pua’ (MP, PJ Utara, DAP) Page likes are included under interest in ‘DAP’. However because Facebook does not make Topic details available we cannot easily determine which politicians, if any, were included.
- Statistics on the Opposition primarily refer to component parties of the former Pakatan Rakyat – PKR, PAS and DAP. Interest in PSM is included in total statistics for the Opposition, but is not listed separately due to its small audience.
2. Interest in Political Parties on Facebook
The following graph shows the partisanship of interest in political parties by Facebook users in Malaysia aged 21 years and above. Interest in PAS is assumed to include interest in AMANAH because Facebook has not made separate AMANAH figures available yet.
Out of 8.4 million users in Malaysia (aged 21 years and above) that are interested in BN or Opposition parties:
- 54% are male and 46% are female
- 3 million are interested in Opposition parties
- 8 million are interested in BN parties
- 76% (400 thousand) are exclusively interested in Opposition parties
- 52% (2.9 million) are interested in a mix of Opposition and BN parties
- 71% (5.1 million) are exclusively interested in BN parties
As of August 2016 the level of exclusive interest in 60.71% for BN and 4.76% for the Opposition. This is a record high for BN and a record low for the Opposition since we began tracking these statistics in December 2012.
Analysis of Opinions on Lim Guan Eng’s Corruption Charges by Twitter Users in Malaysia
1. Background
On March 17th 2016, Shabudin Yahaya (BN MP for Tasek Gelugor) alleged that the Chief Minister of Penang, Lim Guan Eng was involved in the sale of two plots of land in Taman Manggis, Penang to a company whose owner was connected to the owner of a bungalow purchased by Lim Guan Eng. The purchase of the bungalow was alleged to have been below the market-price [1].
Comparisons were made between these allegations and former Menteri Besar of Selangor, Khir Toyo’s case where he was convicted for abusing his power to acquire land and property below the market-price.
Following these allegations, a series of exposes and more allegations surfaced online. MACC conducted investigations and on June 29th Lim Guan Eng was arrested and held overnight. On June 30th he was charged with corruption in the Penang High Court. His former land-lady, Phang Li Koon was also charged for her involvement.
The charges faced by Lim Guan Eng are described below:
“Lim is facing two charges for corruption – one under Section 165 of the Penal Code and another Section 23 of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Act (MACC) 2009 — over his approval of an application from Magnificent Emblem to convert a piece of land from agricultural to residential use, as well as over his purchase of a house from the firm’s director, Phang, for RM2.8 million, which was below the property’s market value of RM4.27 million.” [2]
Since the story broke in March we tracked mentions of Lim Guan Eng, Taman Manggis, Khir Toyo and other related terms to gauge the response to the initial story and on-going exposes.
2. Initial Analysis (March 17th – April 30th)
We initially examined tweets by 10,627 users from March 17th – April 30th 2016 mentioning the keywords related to allegations against Lim Guan Eng.
What we found was the topic was popular mainly with users with a strong partisan interest in Malaysian politics. This issue did not draw enough interest from the general public – it was not worth talking about, and those who did tended to express disinterest or only retweet news articles.
The topic also drew more interest from users based in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Penang. 59% of users tweeting about the topic (not including retweets) were based in these 3 states. The highest drop in interest was from users in Johor, which made up 8.63% of the local population (1.96 points lower than the proportional average).
There was also a high degree of spammed tweets, with spammed tweets outnumbering non-spammed tweets on some days. This can be seen in the chart below:
1,358 users spammed 49,223 tweets. In other words, 12.8% of the users spammed 41.8% of the total tweets.
From a manual reading of non-spammed tweets during this period, we found that tweeted opinions about the scandal fell mainly into the following categories:
- Users not interested in Lim Guan Eng’s scandal
- Users complaining about excessive media coverage. Most complaints implied users were bored or not interested in listening to the repeated allegations.
- Users wanting Lim Guan Eng to be investigated
- Users comparing Lim Guan Eng’s case with Khir Toyo’s case
- Users criticising Lim Guan Eng’s responses to the allegations
- Users critical of BN and DAP, equating both to be corrupt
- Users defending Lim Guan Eng. Among the more popular reasons were:
- BN / UMNO / PM Najib are considered to be worse
- The discount isn’t that big / there is nothing wrong with a good deal
- The 1MDB scandal is much bigger and more important than Lim Guan Eng’s scandal
- Khir Toyo’s house is bigger
Users defending Lim Guan Eng were a small minority. There was little evidence of pro-DAP or pro-Opposition users being mobilised to defend Lim Guan Eng.
Out of 44 DAP politicians actively tweeting in this period, only 27 politicians tweeted/retweeted tweets mentioning Lim Guan Eng or keywords related to the allegations. This does not include images or tweets not mentioning related keywords. By not talking about the allegations the 17 politicians missed an opportunity to contribute to Lim Guan Eng’s defence on Twitter.
Because of the low level of interest from the general public and the high degree of spam, we could not do a detailed opinion analysis at the time.
3. Analysis of Opinions on Lim Guan Eng’s Corruption Charges (June 29th – July 6th)
We examined tweets by 8,365 users from June 29th – July 6th 2016 mentioning keywords related to allegations against Lim Guan Eng. The daily interest is shown in the graph below.
We then performed opinion-based analysis on 520 users based in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Penang. The margin of error is +/- 4.3%.
Evaluating Voter Support in Kuala Kangsar and Sungai Besar Using General Election Results and Twitter
1. Background
Prior to the 13th General Election (GE13) we came up with a methodology of predicting election results based on voting patterns in previous elections.
Our method relied on mapping polling lane results to individual voters. This process assigned probability values (chance of turnout; chance of voting for each coalition) to the voter that was not affected if they migrated to another constituency. This is important because between GE12 and GE13 527,849 voters migrated to different constituencies.
The impact of voter migration cannot be measured for a single seat by comparing the results of GE12 and GE13 for that seat. An analysis of the whole country needs to be performed. New voter registrations, voters passing away and voters no longer eligible to vote are other factors that require deep analysis.
After GE13 we were able to apply the same estimation method to voters based on GE13 results. By comparing the shift in probabilities we are able to calculate the swing in support for each coalition. Because we base our calculations on individual voters, we are able to calculate shifts in support based on combinations of the following dimensions:
- By Age
- By Race
- By Gender
- By Urban Development Category (rural / semi-urban / urban)
- By Parliament/State Assembly Seat
- By Polling District
- By Locality
- By Seats Won by Specific Parties
Any voter whose level of support cannot be determined is assigned a probability of 50% and categorised as a fence-sitter. The most reliable metric is age because voters are separated into polling lanes based on age. Additionally we have also categorised the 222 Parliament constituencies as rural, semi-urban or urban based on satellite imagery. The descriptions of each category are:
Rural = villages (kampungs) / small towns / farmland distributed within the seat. Rural seats tend to be physically large with a low population.
Semi-urban = larger towns and/or numerous small towns, may include villages as well
Urban = cities where a majority of the seat is covered by some form of urban development
For this report we will focus on how Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Nasional (BN) performed with regular voters (pengundi biasa) in P67.Kuala Kangsar and P93.Sungai Besar. This will give a sense of what to expect during the by-elections to be held on June 18th 2016.
In addition to this we will also briefly examine political interest from Twitter users based in these constituencies. This may identify patterns that can be linked to urban youth in these areas.
Postal and early voters are not part of this analysis. They need to be analysed separately due to their different voting process and difficulties in campaigning to both groups.
Please remember that unless otherwise stated, all statistics in this analysis refer to regular voters only. We do not have access to the electoral roll being used for these by-elections and will be relying on estimated figures from the electoral roll for 2015 Q4 (4th quarter).
2. Seat Demographics
Demographics for Sungai Besar and Kuala Kangsar are listed below.
| Detail / Seat | P93. Sungai Besar | P67. Kuala Kangsar |
| State
|
Selangor
|
Perak
|
| Voters (GE13)
|
42,923 (2.09% of Selangor voters)
|
33,607 (2.38% of Perak voters)
|
| Urban Development Category
|
Rural
|
Semi-urban
|
| Majority Race
|
Malay
|
Malay
|
| Contesting Parties (GE13)
|
UMNO, PAS
|
UMNO, PAS, Independent
|
| Winner (GE13)
|
UMNO
|
UMNO
|
|
Twitter Users
|
1,049 (0.66% of Selangor users) 89% primarily use Bahasa Malaysia |
660 (2.39% of Perak users) 81% primarily use Bahasa Malaysia |
The following charts show the estimated ethnic divide among voters in both seats based on our estimated electoral roll for 2015 Q4. This covers all voters (postal, early and regular).
Changes in Sungai Besar since GE13 (up to 2015 Q4):
- Malay voters increased by 0.33 percentage points
- Chinese voters decreased by 0.4 percentage points
- Indian voters increased by 0.06 percentage points
- 1,260 voters removed
- 1,394 new voters
- 171 voters migrated in from other constituencies
Changes in Kuala Kangsar since GE13 (up to 2015 Q4):
- Malay voters increased by 0.46 percentage points
- Chinese voters decreased by 0.45 percentage points
- Indian voters decreased by 0.015 percentage points
- 1,153 voters removed
- 1,079 new voters
- 185 voters migrated in from other constituencies
Both seats have had an increase in the percentage of Malay voters, and a decrease in the percentage of Chinese voters.
How Barisan Nasional and Pakatan Rakyat Performed With Voters in Sarawak (GE13)
1. Background
Prior to the 13th General Election (GE13) we came up with a methodology of predicting election results based on voting patterns in previous elections.
Our method relied on mapping polling lane results to individual voters. This process assigned probability values (chance of turnout; chance of voting for each coalition) to the voter that was not affected if they migrated to another constituency. This is important because between GE12 and GE13 527,849 voters migrated to different constituencies.
The impact of voter migration cannot be measured for a single seat just by comparing results of GE12 and GE13 for that seat. An analysis of the whole country needs to be performed. New voter registrations, voters passing away and voters no longer eligible to vote are other factors that require deep analysis.
After GE13 we were able to apply the same estimation method to voters based on GE13 results. By comparing the shift in probabilities we are able to calculate the swing in support for each coalition. Because we base our calculations on individual voters, we are able to calculate shifts in support based on combinations of the following dimensions:
- By Age
- By Race
- By Gender
- By Urban Development Category (rural / semi-urban / urban)
- By Parliament/State Assembly Seat
- By Polling District
- By Locality
- By Seats Won by Specific Parties
Any voter whose level of support cannot be determined is assigned a probability of 50% and categorised as a fence-sitter. The most reliable metric is age because voters are separated into polling lanes based on age. Additionally we have also categorised the 222 Parliament constituencies as rural, semi-urban or urban based on satellite imagery. The descriptions of each category are:
Rural = villages (kampungs) / small towns / farmland distributed within the seat. Rural seats tend to be physically large with a low population.
Semi-urban = larger towns and/or numerous small towns, may include villages as well
Urban = cities where a majority of the seat is covered by some form of urban development
For this report we will focus on how Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Nasional (BN) performed with regular voters (pengundi biasa) in Sarawak. 31 of the total 222 Parliament seats are in Sarawak.
Our analysis will focus on Malay, Chinese and Bumiputera Sarawak voters. Other ethnic groups such as Indians, Orang Asli and Bumiputera Sabah voters will be counted under the ‘Others’ category unless otherwise specified. This is due to their low numbers within the electorate and the lack of detail within the National Census data.
Postal and early voters are not part of this analysis, other than the section on polling lanes. Postal voters need to be analysed separately due to their different voting process and difficulties in campaigning to both groups.
The predicted support for PR based on GE12 was estimated to be low. This is because in GE12 the PR component parties did not contest all seats. SNAP and Independents contested BN in some seats with no PR candidates. There were also seats that were won by BN uncontested. PR was effectively untested in Sarawak.
We tested analysis using SNAP and Independent results as ‘pro-Opposition’ in place of PR. However this approach made little impact on the analysis. A vote for SNAP or Independents also cannot be assumed as a vote for PR. To keep analysis consistent with a ‘BN versus PR’ perspective we did not treat SNAP and Independent candidate results as PR results.
We will also present analysis of seats at the state (DUN) level based on individual voting at the Parliament level. It is not as accurate as performing analysis based on state-level results but it should be applicable for constituencies where voters voted for the same coalition (BN / PR) for both state and Parliament.
Please remember that unless otherwise stated, all statistics in this analysis refer to regular voters in Sarawak only.
