The Impact of Redelineation On The Selangor State Elections

1. Introduction

On September 15^th 2016 the Election Commission of Malaysia (Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya Malaysia) published the proposed redelineation of electoral boundaries for State and Federal constituencies. Under this proposal:

• No new Federal constituencies would be created
• 13 new State constituencies would be created in Sabah
• No new State constituencies would be created in states other than Sabah
• 12 Federal constituencies would be renamed
• 36 State constituencies would be renamed

This report provides an overview of the impact of state constituency redelineation on the Selangor State elections. Analysis was performed based on the 2016 1^st Quarter (Q1) electoral roll (before and after redelineation), State and Federal seat results from the 13^th General Election (GE13) and individual historical voting patterns from GE12 (2008) and GE13 (2013).

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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:

1. Total population refers to Facebook users aged 13 years and above.
2. Potential voters refer to Facebook users aged 21 years and above.
3. Youth refers to Facebook users aged 13 – 20 years.
4. 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.
5. Figures provided by Facebook are estimates. Some inaccuracies are to be expected.
6. Facebook users residing in Malaysia are not necessarily Malaysian citizens.
7. Interest in a topic is equal to the number of users expressing interest in a topic.
   1. 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).
   2. 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
   3. Interest in a political party does not indicate support for the party, only awareness
   4. It is assumed that interest in PAS includes interest in AMANAH as PAS leaders migrated to AMANAH
8. Audience refers to the population of users that express interest in a topic.
9. 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.
10. 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.

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 18^th 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 (4^th 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.