Malaysia General Election May 9th 2018

[Oryxslayer]

BN going backwards in seats right now...

[Oryxslayer]

Where we stand now.

[Oryxslayer]

BN 58 PH 79 PAS 8 Pro-PH Ind 1 Unknown Ind 1

PAS actually did fairly well under the circumstances and there are more seats to come.  I guess they also benefited from swing against BN.

They might end up losing pretty badly in Terengganu federally though, the locals show a bunch of ticket splits though.

[Oryxslayer]

He's an interesting thought - PAS probably will be part of the opposition unless they rejoin the coalition officially, but I suspect they would be happy to vote in favor of electoral reform initiatives. Teregganu, and Kelatan especially are some of the overpopulated seat states.

[Oryxslayer]

Apparently there are rumors that these results are coming slow so that Najib can provoke a reason to declare marshal law. But, with the numbers out right now and with Mahatier already claiming victory, it would be hard to survive international and local condemnation with that move.

[Oryxslayer]

Finally port Dickson flips back to PH. This was originally PH, but started the nigh in the BN corner. I has been there for a while.

[Oryxslayer]

it seems that Razak failed to show up at BN headquarters for a "victory celebration" party and his whereabouts are unknown. 

I'm officially taking bets he is fleeing the country to avoid the expected 1MDB trials.

[Oryxslayer]

https://election.thestar.com.my/terengganu.html This site has different numbers for Terengganu with PAS sweeping. It also has data on Sabah.

[Oryxslayer]

I feel like there is an error on the Merbok MP seat in Kedah. It says BN won it, but it seems to be a PH stronghold

https://election.thestar.com.my/terengganu.html they have it right. http://live.undi.info/ has been behind for a bit since the commission put the squeeze on released numbers.

[Oryxslayer]

I believe this is the present state of play. Quite obvious PH  now has a majority, how big is question.

[Oryxslayer]

On your comment, I think PAS can still get Baling, though some sites have called for BN.

[Oryxslayer]

So presuming PH takes office, what's their plan? After 61 years in opposition I'm sure they'll have a big agenda. I suppose pardoning Ibrahim and having him take over as PM will be the first order of business? As well as addressing the malapportionment as best they can. What other big items will be on their list? Eliminating the structural advantages and support for Malays? Repealing the security laws that have locked up so many activists?

Thats the big question on I think everyones minds - will they become another 2009 DP, merely continuing the previous structural plans? Or will they actually have an agenda. One advantage the PH has is that they actually have a committed loyal base with demands unlike the DP, who float from seat to seat based on candidate quality.

Couple major fronts are:

China - PH probably now opposes SCS encroachments and turns more towards the US/TPP allies.

Electoral reform - depends upon how large the non-BN front is, since PAS probably supports this since their seats are overpopulated. But how strong of a reform depends upon future moves.

Singapore - Mahatier previously wasn't on the best relations with Singapore, but now his party has a loyal and powerful Chinese faction in it. Probably nothing much changes.

Scrapping the VAT tax - Big proposal to lower cost of living. Tax might not be entirely done away with, just cut a lot, but this was the key plank that won them the election. Fortunatly Trump's Iran sh**t yesterday will raise the price of Oil, so PH cutting this won't be such a big problem.

Punishing and investigating MDB1 - Pretty simple.

[Oryxslayer]

So presuming PH takes office, what's their plan? After 61 years in opposition I'm sure they'll have a big agenda. I suppose pardoning Ibrahim and having him take over as PM will be the first order of business? As well as addressing the malapportionment as best they can. What other big items will be on their list? Eliminating the structural advantages and support for Malays? Repealing the security laws that have locked up so many activists?

I think reducing or repealing new GST.  I think higher inflation plus this extra tax is part of the reason for the anti-BN swing.   Problem is not sure the fiances can handle this loss of revenue.  

Yeah, this is the one key plank. As I said though, Trump's Iran sanctions will probably raise the cost of a barrel, helping balance the budget somewhat.

[Oryxslayer]

I love the fact that thestar.com.my has a 5th uncalled seat....Klang, literally the most PH seat in the county.

Putatan gets a PH call, so we are down to 3 official seats and Klang.

[Oryxslayer]

if all the remaining seats fall PH - which they could, then the BN/non-BN ratio would be just 4 seats short of 2/3s constitutional changes. BN better keep their whips sharp, or else they could find the electoral rules changing to benefit the non-BN parties.

[Oryxslayer]

Will PH make a move to get rid of FPTP?

They need 4/5 seats minimum from BN to do constitutional changes like that, and thats if they can coax the entire non-BN causus that the changes are favorable to them. Probably instead puts in place actual bounding restrictions for how far districts can deviate and reapportion those seats not specially allotted under federalism. Or they can create a bunch of new seats/cut old ones like they do in Japan to fix apportionment issues on the peninsula.

It is in every BN interest to get more seats into Selangor after all.

[Oryxslayer]

Papar is called on thestar for WARISAN
Selayang is called for PH on live.undi

[Oryxslayer]

I've gotta say, Mahathir looks good for 92 (!).

Which is another good thing about the PH right now. If Mahathir was a little younger, he might go back on his 2-year word and try to hold the PM seat. But at such an advanced age, with previous health problems, he probably cannot physically stay in office for too long, which gives the time for Ibrahim to actually govern. That said, he was energetic on the campaign.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm digesting the states results. The swing seems even crazier there. The Mahathir factor really worked in Kedah. Even Malacca fell to PH, which is a bit unexpected.

Kedah is going to be interesting. I don't see how a working majority is going to come from 18 PH, 15 PAS, 3 BN unless someone crosses the lines or BN does a deal with their rival.

[Oryxslayer]

It was 123 PH there for a while, and then one flipped to BN in a recount. Anyone catch which seat?

[Oryxslayer]

Sabah-Labuan is PH-WARISAN 14 BN 11 STAR 1.   My model has it at BN 19 PH-WARISAN 7. 

So my model was off in 8 seats.  Any some of them by wild margins.   I totally underestimated the swing in Muslim tribal areas toward WARISAN.  There are a couple of seats where I had BN winning by 15% that went WARISAN or PKR.    In Christian tribal areas I totally underestimated how much the USA alliance ate into the BN vote share. 

I think the major differences between you model (besides a few marginals) were the PAS/GS vote, and Sabah/Sarawok. But tbh, we knew that how Sabah broke down and how the GS vote was concentrated were going to decide the election. Those were the big unknowns.

[Oryxslayer]

How big a surprise was this to those who following closely.  Malaysia has had the same party in power since 1957 so I think even though polls suggested change was possible many didn't believe it would actually happen (sort of my reminds me here in Canada of the Alberta 2015 election where you had a similar upset).  What will this mean going forward and also how does support amongst the three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese, and Indian.  Also I read the constituencies were massively gerrymandered making it even more of an upset as many expected the BN to lose the popular vote but still win the most seats.

I will add that in my long pre-election twitter post, I said that there was probably a 70% change of BN being in the better position, and 30% chance of PH having the advantage. Of course, I further broke it down into hung/majority so it was really something like 50-40-10 BN-hung-PH.

While I didn't have a nice model, all the articles I was reading, the various models out there, + Jaichind's excellent pre-election posts were giving me the assumption that PH at least had the same odds as Trump did in November. So I gave them, perhaps incorrectly, the same 30% 538 did on the 8th.

[Oryxslayer]

Jaichind,

Thank you for all your posts. They were really informative and I appreciated the effort you put in.

Ditto. Whenever you choose to cover an election, you do it WELL. If this was reddit, I might give you gold.

Something regarding turnout I read was that while total turnout was down, total voters were well above 2013. The large registration increase put the fact that while overall numbers went up, percent dropped. There is a variety of reasons for this methinks - Wednesday date, polling stations closing on the dot at 5 rather then letting those in line still vote, lackluster BN turnout - particularly in the East. One of the unspoken reasons was that there was thought  that there were a bunch of dummy voters on the rolls to preserve the BN, but because the wave was so large - large enough to override most of the gains made by these voters, these dummy votes never ended up getting added to the mix.

[Oryxslayer]

On the question of turnout - I'm currently creating a turnout map, and it looks like most of the Key peninsula areas was around 80-85%, it was main the east dragging turnout down.

edit: here is the Map.

[Oryxslayer]

Turnout now calculated at 82.32%, at least according to wikipedia