Ong Kian Ming

First published in Malaysiakini on 20th Janurary 2009

This article is not about explaining what went wrong with my final prediction of a 7,000 majority win for PAS. I will just say this - even my earlier and more accurate prediction of a 3,300 majority which employed a different methodology had some faulty predictions when compared to the actual results.

My analysis of the racial voting trends from the March 2008 general election to the January 2009 by-election (a 10-month period) confirms both these claims. The drop in the Malay vote for the BN from 2008 to 2009 was small - only 2.5%. And the Chinese support for the BN from 2008 to 2009 did increase slightly - by 1.4%.

Table 1 shows a summary of my racial voting estimates from 2008 and 2009.

(In an earlier estimate of Malay and non-Malay racial voting for 2008, I showed a 47% and 65% BN support among the Malays and non-Malays respectively. I did not account for turnout differentials between these two groups in the earlier estimate.)

Does this mean that the BN can rest easy given that it has managed to minimise its losses among the Malay voters and also managed to make a small gain among Chinese voters? Any Umno and MCA leader who thinks this way should seriously reconsider their position. And here's why.

Younger voters more likely to vote opposition

The overall results mask many underlying trends which can only be revealed through a very careful analysis of the votes at the ‘saluran' levels. And my analysis of voting patterns by saluran from 2008 to 2009 shows a remarkably consistent trend - younger voters, regardless of race, are more likely to vote opposition in the KT by-election.

I calculated the changes in the level of BN support by saluran, or polling streams, which are segregated according to the age of the voters - older voters can be found in the earlier salurans and younger voters in the later salurans.

I found that for the salurans where the average age of the voters was below 35, the level of BN support decreased by 4.4%. For the salurans where the average voter age was from 35 to 55, the decrease in BN support was 1.5%, and for salurans with voters above 55, the decrease in the level of BN support was 0.8%.

The results are summarised in Table 2 below.

This is unmistakable evidence of a trend towards voting for the opposition among younger voters regardless of race.

In my earlier article predicting a 3.300 majority win for PAS, I showed evidence that the level of BN support in KT among those below 35 was slightly higher than those from 35 to 55. Table 2 shows a shift in this pattern in that the level of BN support among the Y Generation is slightly lower than the level of BN support among older voters.

This is significant when one considers the large number of unregistered but eligible voters in Malaysia. If younger voters entering into the electorate are more likely to vote for the opposition compared to the older voters leaving the electorate, the overall electorate will trend towards the opposition.

And if there is a concerted effort among the opposition or NGOs to register a larger number of younger voters to vote in the next election, one can imagine the trouble that the BN will find itself in.

They're less susceptible to vote buying

What is as significant is the fact that the results show that the younger voters in KT are far from susceptible to vote buying than one may initially have imagined.

The hypothesis that younger voters, who might be less financially stable or secure than older voters, may be more tempted to succumb to vote buying on the part of the incumbent party has NOT been proven, at least in the context of the KT by-election.

The point of younger voters trending opposition is well illustrated by the voting trends in the Kampung Cina salurans.

Kampung Cina is the polling station where a quarter of the Chinese voters in Kuala Terengganu can be found. It is one of the two Chinese-majority polling stations in this parliamentary constituency.

The BN support in Kampung Cina actually increased from 58.8% in March 2008 to 62.6% in January 2009. This surprised many politicians as well as analysts (including myself) because most people were expecting this polling station to swing towards PAS.

An analysis of the salurans in Kampung Cina shows that the level of BN support increased in all salurans except the last one - where most of the younger voters can be found. In this last saluran, the level of BN support actually fell by 5.9%.

The trend of younger Chinese who are willing to vote for PAS becomes even more significant for MCA when one considers that the turnout in the youngest saluran fell by 11% compared to decreases below 5% in the other salurans.

The conventional wisdom before the by-election was that it would help the BN if turnout among the Chinese who were working outside KT were to decrease because these voters, many of them who are working in the urban areas in the west coast of Peninsular Malayisa, would be more willing to vote for the opposition compared to the Chinese voters who live in KT or in other parts of Terengganu.

This makes sense especially when one considers that these outside voters would not be as susceptible to the threats of temporary occupancy licences (TOL) being taken away from them by the state government.

In other words, these younger Chinese voters as well as other outstation Chinese voters would have been more willing to vote for the opposition. A higher turnout among these voters would have decrease the level of BN support in Kampung Cina and other polling stations with a larger percentage of Chinese voters.

In addition, the BN and especially MCA cannot assume that the same kinds of threats that were leveled at a minority community in a state that is 95% Malay and controlled by BN, can work in west coast states where the non-Malays can be found in much larger numbers and also happen to live in some states which are controlled by the opposition.

When one cannot effectively ‘target' a community for voting the opposition, the efficacy of that threat decreases significantly.

Young Malays: Lower turnout too

The turnout patterns in Kampung Cina points to the larger issue of turnout, especially among Malay voters.

Table 4 below shows the average change in turnout by saluran from March 2008 to January 2009.

Table 4 shows that turnout among salurans where the average age was below 35 fell by an average of 5.3% compared to a decrease of 1.8% and 0.9%  respectively for those from 35 to 55 and those 55 and above.

A lot of this is being driven by lower turnout among the younger Malays since the Chinese majority salurans only number a few. There are two ways to interpret the effects of a decrease in Malay turnout among the younger voters, both of which are not beneficial to the BN.

One argument would be to say that a higher turnout among the younger Malay voters would have decreased the level of BN support even further because younger voters are more willing to switch their vote to the opposition.

If this is true, the BN cannot rely on the coincidence of having a Chinese New Year holiday so close to the by-election to decrease the level of voter turnout among the younger Malay voters. In a general election, a larger percentage of these young Malay voters would turn up to vote, as would their Chinese counterparts, and a majority of these voters would vote for the opposition.

The other argument would be to say that the BN wasn't successful in mobilising its younger supporters this time because of the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays.

But this argument does not really work in BN's favour either when one considers the amount of resources that the BN put into this by-election to mobilise its own supporters.

If the BN failed to get its own younger Malay supporters to turn up to vote in a crucial by-election such as the one in KT, how will it be able to mobilise its own supporters during a general election where the resource advantages enjoyed by the BN are dispersed across different constituencies?

In conclusion, a deeper examination of the saluran results shows that younger voters regardless of race are much willing to vote for the opposition.

A higher turnout among the younger voters would have increase the margin of victory for PAS especially if more Chinese voters turned out. As more and more younger voters replace their older counterparts, the electorate as a whole is likely to trend towards the opposition. One also cannot assume that younger voters can be as easily swayed by the lure of vote buying.

Finally, the BN cannot assume that the threats to the small Chinese community in Terengganu can work in the same manner among Chinese and Indian voters in the west coast states in Peninsular Malaysia.

Related analysis: Light and darkness: Reflections on KT

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