Malaysia General Election May 9th 2018

[jaichind]

Will MCA continue to collapse? I still love them because of this ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U38y6tu4-C8

The last minute seat delineation exercise had the effect of packing more Malay voters into UNMO marginal seats but that mean MCA and MIC seats (mostly Multi-ethnic)  will have less Malay voters.  So UNMO is really cannibalizing MCA and MIC seats to shore up UNMO.

In 2013 MCA won 7 seats and MIC won 4.  My model for 2018 has MCA at 5 and MIC as 3.  And that is taking into account that the leaders for MCA and MIC will get a bump for name recognition or else it could been 4 and 2 respectively.

[jaichind]

This commentator (obviously pro-HP) predicted 100 seats for PH in  Peninsular Malaysia

https://thecoverage.my/news/pakatan-harapan-win-118-seats-121-seats-form-federal-government-simple-majority-capturing-5-states/

His logic is an extreme version of my projections saying that PAS is very strong in Kelantan and Terengganu but weaker elsewhere while PH get a part of the old PAS out elsewhere and any swing away from BN's Malay vote will then go to PH.






If you try to use this data to calculate vote share in Peninsular Malaysia  you get

                                         Weight       BN     PH    PAS
Kelantan and Terengganu       14%        40%   20%   40%
Malay (rest)                          52%        45%   40%   15%
Chinese                                25%        10%   90%     0%
Indian                                    9%        50%   50%     0%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                        36.0% 50.6%  13.4%

Obviously if PH wins 50.6% of the  Peninsular Malaysia over BN's 36.0% then for sure PH will do very well.  But this projection shows what an uphill climb PH has to make to win a majority on its own.  Even if PH beats BN in Peninsular Malaysia by almost 15% if they are held to 9 seats in Borneo PH still does not get to majority overall.

Of course this guy claims that PH will win 20 seats in Borneo which I find very unlikely.

But overall his vision matches that of my that PAS will be very strong in key Rural districts but weak elsewhere which is NOT the vote split BN was looking for.   The result is that while BN will most likely  be the largest bloc they will not win a landslide they were looking for with the opposition split.

[jaichind]

Mahathir Probed Under Malaysia Fake News Law for Sabotage Claim

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-03/mahathir-probed-under-malaysia-fake-news-law-for-sabotage-claim

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Mahathir claims that last week there was an attempt to sabotage his airplane so he could not get to the island of  Langkawi to file his papers in time.  In the end he took another plane to get there.  But since an investigation shows that most likely there was not such sabotage and that the tires blew out he is under investigation under the new fake news law.

[jaichind]

Malaysia election laws says billboards can only have the candidate and the President of the party of the candidate.    This is a problem for PH since its two most popular leaders are de facto PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim and PPBM's Mahathir Mohammad.  Since PPBM's symbol was suspended right before the election DAP PPBM and PKR made a decision for all PH candidates to contest under the PKR symbol.  As a result all PH candidates are in theory PKR candidates.  So only PKR leader Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (Anwar Ibrahim's wife) can show up in poster with the PH candidate.

PH decided to ignore this law and put in its billboards Mahathir, Anwar or both.  Selective prosecution of this law has led to funny results where the police has cut out the illegal part of the billboard (pictures/names of Mahathir and Anwar).

 




Of course BN (MCA) posters with PRC leader Xi Jinping and PRC tycoon and Alibaba head Jack Ma goes untouched.



pro-PH discussion boards jokes that this proves that PRC's Xi Jinping is the real leader of BN ergo the police saw no need to remove Xi's picture.

[jaichind]

 
Sabah will also see state elections as well.  For the  Tambunan seat we will most likely see a 3 brother election of the Kitingan clan.


PBS founder and former CM and now DCM Joseph Pairin Kitingan will run representing PBS as part of BN.  STAR founder Jeffrey Kitingan who formed PBS along with his brother back in the 1980s but have since broke with his brother and went over to the opposition will also run.  It seems a third brother Crispin Kitingan who has been not as involved in politics will also run in the same seat representing WARISAN.


Left to right Joseph Pairin Kitingan, Jeffrey Kitingan, Crispin Kitingan.

This is the first election I have seen where all 3 major candidates are brothers.

In the end  WARISAN did not nominate Crispin Kitingan so we will not have a brother vs brother vs brother race.  BUT  WARISAN instead nominated Justin Alip who is the brother-in-law of both Joseph Pairin Kitingan and Jeffrey Kitingan.  Justin Alip was a key lieutenant of  Joseph Pairin Kitingan until Jan of this year when he defected from PBS to  WARISAN.

So instead of brother vs brother vs brother we will have brother vs brother vs brother-in-law.

[jaichind]

Family civil war in Kelantan over PAS-AMANAH split.  Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat was the PAS CM of Kelantan from 1990-2013 before BN retook the state.  He was a fairly liberal face for PAS and was able to attract non-Muslim voters for PAS.  He passed away in 2015.  His son second son Nik Omar at the last minute defected to AMANAH and will run for AMANAH in the Kelantan state assembly elections. 



Given that his father was PAS in  Kelantan this represented a fundamental threat to PAS and could create a vertical split in the PAS vote an allow BN to sweep the state.  PAS managed to convince Nik Omar's mother Tuan Sabariah Tuan Ishak to denounce her son and publicly campaign against him.  Her eldest son is running on the PAS ticket in another seat.

 

I think this is the first time I have seen a mother campaigning against her own son.

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

http://tindakmalaysia.maps.arcgis.com/apps/StorytellingSwipe/index.html?appid=bc4d7c82af2e4b618bce487a4ad650e9

Here is a neat little map of the peninsula that compares the boundaries of the last election to to the coming one.

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

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?

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

LOL

The moment I ask for demographic data, the site a use for data gets a nice fancy map mapping the demographic data of each of the seats, including the new ones.

http://www.tindakmalaysia.org/online-electoral-maps-of-malaysia

[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.

[Oryxslayer]

More PH friendly one from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/06/asia/najib-razak-malaysia-general-election-intl/index.html

A BBC article more on Mahathir then the big picture:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43985623

There is also a WSJ article that is paywalled.

The fact the big news sites are picking up the election pre-story rather then just mentioning the post-mortem speaks to the potential competitiveness.

There is also a recent biased opinion piece on WashPo that everyone should probably just ignore, comparing Najib to Erdogan.

[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.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

How extreme is the PAS manifesto?

[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.