Malaysia General Election May 9th 2018

[jaichind]

I have been looking over the profiles of the candidates in the election.  I found a few cases where the opposition seems to plan to cash in on the attractiveness of their candidates.  Some examples I found are

PKR's Nurul Izzah Anwar who is a 2 time MP running for a third term in a different district.  Of course her main claim to fame is not her looks but the fact that she is the daughter of PKR's jailed de factor leader Anwar Ibrahim.
 

DAP's Yeo Bee Yin who is running for MP.  She is already a member of the Selangor state assembly and actually has some good policy understanding from her role there.


WARISAN's Jo-Anna Sue Henley Rampa won is running for a Sabah state assembly seat.  Her career so far is a model so she is mostly running on her looks it seems.

[jaichind]

22-year-old law student P. Prabakaran might be the luckiest man in this election.



 In the Kuala Lumpur seat of Batu which has become a safe PKR seat (2013 it was PKR 58.4% Gerkan (BN Chinese party)) the PKR incumbent was not allowed to contest on a technicality where he was fined back in March for insulting a police officer.  P. Prabakaran might have seen this coming (he is a law student after all) and ran as an independent.  When the PKR incumbent Chua Tian Chang was disqualified at the last minute he worked to get PH's support. Chua Tian Chang and PKR to be the PH endorsed candidate.   There is another MIC rebel in the fray but PKR went with P. Prabakaran.   Chua Tian Chang is now campaigning with   P. Prabakaran to get him elected.



If the PH vote base moves en masse to P. Prabakaran he is likely to win making him easliy the youngest MP elected in this election.

[jaichind]

I have been going around reading a bunch of stuff in preparation for the election, and it certainly feels like the opposition has the wind at their backs. Of course, it will be hard to crack the rural BN wall, along with the gerrymandering and malaportionment. But, most sites seem to suggest that this year might be different in regards to rural areas like Johor and Sabah. Perhaps one could say the PH has the same chance Trump did on 538 in November, 30%? It just stinks that polling is biased and poor quality here, so almost nobody knows what is happening.

Totally agree that Johor will be critical.  If PH is going to do well they have to breakthrough in Johor.   PAS is strong in the Northern Peninsular Malaysia states of Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu and generally weak elsewhere.    Kelantan and Terengganu will be BN vs PAS.  Elsewhere it will be BN vs PH.  Kedah will be a fun 3 way battle.  PH will outperform here due to the Mahathir factor.  Mahathir is from Kedah and is still very popular there.  PR defeated BN in 2008 when Mahathir was on bad terms with BN.  But in 2013 when Mahathir was backing BN, BN was able to recapture the state.  So because of Mahathir what should be a 2 way battle between BN and PAS will be a BN vs PH vs PAS 3 way battle where I think the vote shares all three blocs will be fairly close.

I think the odds are that PH will not win.  What is more possible is choas.  PH at best can get to around 95 out of 165 Peninsular Malaysia and around 13 from Borneo to get to around 108 seats.  Now PH has to hope PAS does well in PAS vs BN marginals to get to around 12 seats which leaves BN at 102.

On paper what takes place next is a BN-PAS alliance to get to a majority.  But then around 13-14 out of the BN 102 seats are Borneo Christian parties which would be very negative on being in a coalition with a hard-line Muslim PAS.  Some of them could defect over to PH leading to total choas and a free-for-all poaching by both sides which BN is likely to win due to its resource advantage.   But such a government will not be popular or last long and BN would be crushed in the next midterm election.

Most likely this is the best PH can hop for.  PH's strategy of alliance with the Muslim tribal WARISAN instead of the Christian based USA alliance in Sabah might be because it had such a scenerio in mind.  It is clear in Christian Sabah BN is not popular and that a PH-USA alliance could win a extra 2-3 seats.  But the BN Christian parties (PBS UPKO PBRS) are very negative on some of the USA parties which are mostly BN Christian party rebels.  An alliance with USA would make it hard for PH and the BN Christian parties to make deals post alliance.  So PH opted for WARISAN as its Sabah ally.  UPKO and PBRS are really PBS splinters and PBS was an anti-BN party in the 1990s.   If PH does well it can hope to get these parties on its side if no bloc can form a majority.

[jaichind]

A major factor that will impact the outcome in Peninsular Malaysia is exactly how the PAS share of the Malay vote will be distributed.

Let's start with the lastest Merdeka Centre survey
http://merdeka.org/v4/index.php/downloads/category/2-researches?download=184:ge14-02052018-presentation-final-03052018
 
which has
BN  40.3%
PH  43.7%
GS 16.0%

And ethnic breakdown


First there is a problem with this chart

If you look at the Politweet report from earlier this year

https://politweet.wordpress.com/2018/01/16/election-forecast-for-pakatan-harapan-in-peninsular-malaysia-ge14/

You get the ethnic breakdown of Peninsular Malaysia as of 2017 which is

Malay    60.7%
Chinese 29.5%
Indian     8.3%
Others     1.5%

and if you plug in the ethnic support breakdown from the Merdeka Centre survey you get

BN   40.8%
PH   46.2%
GS   12.8%

But lets go with this breakdown for now.   Merdeka Centre  refused to provide a seat projection based on its survey.  But since I have the ethnic breakdown per district I can try to provide different seat projections.

If we just assume that the Malay vote is split BN 51.2% PH 27.8% GS 20.9% across the board.  Then computing seats we get out of the 165 Peninsular Malaysia seats (I assume that the GS support will go 90% BN and 10% PH if there is no GS candidate since the core PAS vote these days view DAP as the "enemy")

BN   91
PH   74
GS     0

A gain of 6 seats from 2013 for BN.

But if we take the more logical assumption that PAS support will be higher in rural areas and also in its heartland of Kedah Kelantan and Terengganu (I will call them KKT) then we can create the following chart for support by front depending on the district

                                        PH       BN      GS         Weight
KKT Rural seats                 17%    41%    42%        21.9%
KKT Suburb seats              25%    45%    30%         9.4%
KKT Urban seast                30%    50%   20%          2.8%
non-KKT Rural seats          24%    58%   18%         27.7%
non-KKT Suburb seats       34%    55%   11%         20.6%
non-KKT Urban seats         42%    52%     6%         21.9%

Which if we plug them into the seats data we get

BN   71
PH   84
GS   10

Where BN loses 14 seats from 2013 and puts them just a few seats away from losing their majority assuming Borneo seats go mostly like 2013.

The key is the stronger PAS is in KKT the more it can challenge BN and the weaker PAS is in the rest of Peninsular Malaysia the less likely it will eat into anti-BN votes.

This projection is actually similar to my Peninsular Malaysia projection which also assumes that PAS support is stronger in KKT as well as rural areas.
      
       seats   vote share
PH    82          44.4%
BN    70          40.7%
GS    13          14.4%

With my overall projection of all of Malaysia at

       seats   vote share
PH    93          43.7%
BN   116         42.7%
GS    13          12.4%

Where BN is getting close to losing its majority but still pull it out.

[jaichind]

Yeah I think you basically got two of the three factors here - how much will the rural peninsula swing, and how will the PAS/GS vote split. The third factor, one almost nobody knows about is Sabah. The Party Warisan Sabah's presence is a big question mark, and polls basically ignore the Borneo bits because of their homogeneity. The Under-population of the districts there make swings easy, though the institutional support is strong. If your projection becomes true, then the Sabah question mark might make or break the PH.

Also mind pointing me at where you find ethnic data per seat?

Totally agree on Sabah as a X-factor.  It is unclear how much Muslim tribal support WARISAN pulled in.  The crowds at rallies seems large but not clear it would be enough to make a difference in terms of seats.

Other unknowns that will make a difference include how much support for PH Mahathir is able to pull in for Kedah which has become a 3 way race between BN PH and PAS.  There are ground reports of a PH surge but also reports of a PAS surge.  If both are true then BN might be pushed to third place.

The last unknown is how the Sarawak Chinese seats will swing.  PR swept all 6 Sarawak Chinese seats in 2013.   Mahathir is very unpopular among the Sarawak Chinese community.  The opposition in Sarawak state election of 2016 was in total disarray allowing for a unusually large BN landslide.  On the other hand the Sarawak BN CM that won the 2016 election has passed away and the new CM might be facing internal dissension.   All in all I think BN recaptures 2 of the 6 Sarawak Chinese seats but if PH can retain all 6 that will help PH's overall numbers.


See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Malaysian_general_election,_2013_by_parliamentary_constituency

for ethnic breakdown by seat.  Of course this is before the most recent delineation which I modeled for separately.

[jaichind]

Malaysia's Election May Not Be a Done Deal After All

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-06/malaysia-s-election-may-not-be-a-done-deal-after-all

It does not mention it in the article but I suspect this piece was inspired by recent Merdeka Centre polling that shows a shift of Malay votes from PAS to PH.

[jaichind]

Pro-PKR Invoke Malaysia predicts PH wins 111 seats in Peninsular Malaysia vs 54 for BN and 0 for PAS based on its surveys



It projects that in PAS heartland of Kelantan and Terengganu the anti-BN vote would be split throwing almost all seats to BN.  It also projects that with PAS not in alliance with DAP, PAS would capture a good part of the Malay vote in the rest of Peninsular Malaysia and split the anti-DAP vote to throw almost all the BN-PH marginal seats to PH.

"Leaked" BN internals has it at


Which has it in Peninsular Malaysia at BN 97 PH 58 PAS 10

Although it looks a lot like this pro-BN analyst
https://dahalmi.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/pru-14-2018-ramalan-keputusan-pilihan-raya-parlimen-malaysia/

Even these projections admits that PH will gain ground in Johor but BN wins the 3 way battle in Kedah while making gains in PH heartland of Selangor.  This projections is fairly positive on PH chances in Sarawak and Sabah.  It has PH retaining all 6 Chinese seats in Sarawak and PH-WARISAN winning 9 out of 25 seats in Sabah.  That WARISAN only wins 3 out of the PH-WARISAN
9 seats seems to indicate that this survey feels that the PH-WARISAN breakthrough in Sabah will be in the Christian areas.

My current projection for Peninsular Malaysia has it at PH 81 BN 72 GS 12.

[jaichind]

Research firm ILHAM Center came out with their projection for Peninsular Malaysia which has PH as the edge of victory

http://ilhamcentre.com/100-kerusi-mampu-dicapai-ph/

It has

PH   77
BN   56
GS    7
BN/PH tossup 25

And foresees PH at around 100 assuming the tossups are split 50/50.  That would put PH close to majority as long as PH makes minor gains in Borneo. 

[jaichind]

Merdeka Centre's final poll: BN 100, Harapan 83, 37 too close to call



Its vote share breakdown for Peninsular Malaysia has BN losing ground to PAS last few days





          Malay     Chinese       Indian       Other      Total
BN       44.3%      15.8           41.3%      90%       37.3%
PH       27.6%      84.2%        56.5%        5%      43.4%
GS       28.1%       0.0%          2.3%         5%      19.3%

I have to take these ethnic breakdown into my own model because I have my own take on how PAS support is distributed which is less BN friendly than Merdeka Centre.  These numbers with Merdeka Centre model show BN now losing majority.  With my model  I suspect it will be a bloodbath for BN.  Of course I have problems with Merdeka Centre's ethnic breakdown calculations as they do not add up.

[jaichind]

Bookies in Malaysia seems to have odds of PH ahead of BN in terms of seats at around 20% a few days ago.  It seems those odds have risen in the betting markets to around 35%-40%.

[jaichind]

Again, the Malaysia vote base as of 2017 is

Malay    60.7%
Chinese 29.5%
Indian     8.3%
Others     1.5%

So if you plug in Merdeka Centre's

          Malay     Chinese       Indian       Other      Total
BN       44.3%      15.8           41.3%      90%       37.3%
PH       27.6%      84.2%        56.5%        5%      43.4%
GS       28.1%       0.0%          2.3%         5%      19.3%

You get

BN  36.3%
PH  46.3%
PAS 17.2%

and not

BN  37.3%
PH  43.4%
PAS 19.2%

[jaichind]

In BN PM Najib last speech before the election he promises tax exemption for those 26 and younger.  He must have seen polls showing the Youth will turn out for PH so he is trying to scoop back some of those voters for BN.

[jaichind]

One can make different assumptions on how Merdeka Centre's ethnic breakdown vote are distributed in Peninsular Malaysia.



One way, which is what I suspect Merdeka Centre uses, is

a) Malay vote - PH does well in PAS heartland KKT (Kedah Kelantan and Terengganu) but PAS does well in the rest of Malaysia eating into PH's anti-BN vote but PH does very well in Malay Urban vote.

                                        PH       BN      GS         Weight
KKT Rural seats                 22%    39%    39%        21.9%
KKT Suburb seats              29%    41%    30%         9.4%
KKT Urban seast                36%    43%   21%          2.8%
non-KKT Rural seats          19%    46%   35%         27.7%
non-KKT Suburb seats       20%    55%   24%         20.6%
non-KKT Urban seats         57%    34%     9%         21.9%

b) Chinese vote - Less BN over performance in seats that BN Chinese parties (MCA, Gerkan, PPP) are running

                                             PH         BN         GS         Weight
BN Chinese party seats            82.0%  17.0%   1.0%         56.2%
Non-BN Chinese party seats     86.5%  12.5%   1.0%         43.8%

c) Indian vote  - BN over performance where MIC is running

                               PH         BN         GS         Weight
MIC seats                 35.0%   62.8%   2.2%        13.4%
Non-MIC seats          59.8%   38.0%   2.2%        86.6%

Doing this gives us  PH 91 BN 73 GS 1 which seems to match

Merdeka Centre's projection


Which has PH 76  BN 63 PAS 2 and 24 tossup.  It we give tossups to PH 11 BN 12 PAS 1 then it will be PH 87 BN 75 PAS 3 which is fairly similar to that model.  



What I think is a more likely distribution which is a lot less BN friendly would be

a) Malay vote -  PH does poorly in KKT areas where PAS is strong and PAS tends to be weaker in the rest of Malaysia and PH Malay support holds up in suburban areas while BN Malay support holds up in urban areas.

                                        PH       BN      GS         Weight
KKT Rural seats                 17%    41%    42%        21.9%
KKT Suburb seats              24%    41%    35%         9.4%
KKT Urban seast                32%    43%   25%          2.8%
non-KKT Rural seats          22%    48%   30%         27.7%
non-KKT Suburb seats       35%    45%    20%         20.6%
non-KKT Urban seats         42%    41%    14%         21.9%

b) Chinese vote - Significant BN over performance in seats that BN Chinese parties (MCA, Gerkan, PPP) are running

                                             PH         BN         GS         Weight
BN Chinese party seats            77.5%  21.5%   1.0%         56.2%
Non-BN Chinese party seats     82.0%    7.0%   1.0%         43.8%

c) Indian vote - same as above

This sort of breakdown gives us landslide defeat of BN.  PH 102 BN 50 GS 13.  


The last way is to just plug in the ethnic support evenly across all regions.  It surprising gives us PH 105 BN 60 and GS 0.   I guess the PH lead is so large that even an even distribution of the vote causes BN to be defeated.

So if  Merdeka Centre's overall numbers are correct then BN is staring at a hung parliament to a historic defeat at the hands of PH.

[jaichind]

How extreme is the PAS manifesto?

Really comes down to PAS's desire to install Hudud in states which it is the ruling party.  This is a deal breaker for DAP.

There are really two visions of opposition to BN. 

1) The DAP vision which is what is being tried out.   This mostly models on Sweden where two large blocs struggle for power and SD is consigned to the fringes.  DAP see PH as similar the the Sweden Center-Left (ethnic minorities (DAP), Malay liberalism (PKR), with elements of  Islamic liberalism (AMANAH) and soft Malay nationalism(PPBM) while BN represents a establishment Malay nationalist based Center-Right bloc.  PAS would be reduced to the fringes with barely double digit level of support and will go nowhere in a FPTP system which "risks" from DAP point of view of tactical alliance between the fringe party (PAS) and the Center-Right bloc (BN.)

2) The PAS vision of opposition to BN would more match pre-2009 Sri Lanka where two Sinhalese nationalist parties (UPFA and UNP) battle each other while the Tamil nationalist parties are marginalized.  So under PAS's vision it would be a PAS led Malay bloc of PAS PKR AMANAH and PPBM would face off with BN.  Both blocs are Malay based (one nationalist (BN) and one Isalmic (PAS+)) and DAP would represent a Chinese fringe that refuse to integrate into the mainstream Malay society and insist on ethnic minority headcount politics.  DAP under this model would win a few seats on super-Chinese majority areas but the two Malay blocs would battle and alternate in power.

The DAP vision is what is being tried out now.  If PH is beaten decisively PAS can make an argument, very legitimate in my view,  that the opposition should try its vision of opposition to BN.  PAS has demographics on its side.  The share of the population that is Malay is rising over time due to different birth rates.

[jaichind]

One feature that is missing this election cycle has the Israel factor.  Historically both BN and the Opposition has accused each other of being the puppets of Israel.  Anwar Ibrahim has claimed on many occasions that he being in jail is really a BN-Israel plot.  The Malay Opposition historically has been obsessed US Senator John McCain as a Dark Lord behind the scenes pushing Israel's agenda.  This time around with Mahathir in the Opposition camp both sides have mostly stopped using the Israel bogyman given Mahathir's strong record against Israel in the past and Mahathir's desire to make the case against BN on corruption.     

[jaichind]

So just to summarize the two  independent Peninsular Malaysia projections are

ILHAM Center:  PH 77   BN  56   PAS 7   PH/BN tossup 25
Merdeka Centre:  PH  76   BN 62  PAS 2   PH/BN tossup 23  BN/PAS tossup 2 

Lets assume that Borneo would be something like PH 12 BN 45  (a net loss of 3 for BN from 2013)

Both seems to indicate a very narrow majority for BN with a great deal of risk of hung parliament.  If there is a PH-WARISAN surge in Sabah then the BN majority disappears.

The election might come down to Sabah.

My projection so far is still Peninsular Malaysia  PH 81  BN 73  PAS 11.  In Borneo it is PH 11 BN 45 for the total result to be PH 92  BN  119   GS  11.  Same thing.   A surge in Sabah that swings 7-8 seats toward PH could create a hung parliament. 

[jaichind]

Voting starts 8am (8pm EST) and ends 5pm (5am EST.)  Turnout is expected to be around 85% which matches the record 2013 turnout.  If it ends up being 85% or higher that tend to be bad news for BN.  If turnout falls to 75% that tends to help BN.

I think all blocs will start to make claims of victory around 7pm (7am EST) with real results coming in around 7:30pm (7:30am EST).  Hopefully the picture will become clear by 10pm (10am EST).

[jaichind]

For the election eve speeches interest Mahathir clearly won over Razak.    At peak there were around   270K simultaneous viewer of Mahathir's speech at 10pm while Razak's speech at 10pm at peak ther were simultaneous 14K viewers.

Of course this could be 2015 Singapore election redux.  The opposition were clearly way ahead on social media and rallies but were crushed by a PAP GOTV election landslide election day.

[jaichind]

Turnout as of 3pm is 69%.  Back in 2013 when final turnout was a record 85% it was 70% as of 3pm.  It seems final turnout should be around 80%.  If so then this rate would be fairly neutral relative to how it affects BN vs PH.  If turnout falls to 75% then it is most likely advantage BN and if turnout exceeds 85% then it helps PH.

[jaichind]

Turnout numbers by state

Sabah - 67.49% as of 4.30pm.
Kelantan - 68% as of 3pm.
Kedah - 72% as of 3pm.
Perak 73.02% as of 4pm
Negeri Sembilan - 76.5% as of 3pm.
Pahang - 77.64% as of 4pm.
Malacca - 80% as of 4pm.

[jaichind]

Final prediction from me:

Peninsular Malaysia
         
BN    69    40.0%
PH    87    44.0%
GS     9    15.5%

Overall

BN   115   42.0%
PH     98   43.4%
GS      9    13.3%

Narrow BN victory.

[jaichind]

https://www.myundi.com.my/parliament

Seems like a good link to live results.

[jaichind]

Voter turnout in PH stronghold Selangor as at 4:45pm is 76%.  That seems like a good fall from 2013 when turnout there was around 85%.  Relative poor sign for PH.

[jaichind]

Many polling stations still have long lines.  Looks like EC will keep a bunch of them open longer.

[jaichind]

Some early unofficial numbers out of Sarawak look pretty good for PH.  Namely in P209 Julau the pro-PH independent is ahead so far in a seat I figure BN should win by a good margin.   Same for P205   Saratok where PKR is ahead so far for a seat I had down as a BN win by a good margin.