Barisan needs to do more to keep support, votes for GE14

Sometimes in the murky river of statistics, some nuggets shine through.

The Merdeka Center’s study of how Malaysians voted in the past general election has yielded many insightful findings with important implications for the next polls.

The Malaysian Insider has been carrying exclusive reports in the past few days from the study and here are other trends and nuggets gleaned from what the independent researchers found.

BN on thin ice

The number of marginal seats rose by a quarter. There were 80 such seats this year, compared with 63 in 2008. Marginal seats are where the margin of victory was less than 5% and pose a higher risk to the incumbent party.

During the same period, Barisan Nasional's (BN) share of marginal seats almost doubled, from 26 to 51, a sign that Pakatan Rakyat (PR) has firmed its gains from five years ago and had made strong inroads into BN territory.

Thirty-eight of the BN marginal seats were in peninsular Malaysia, 10 in Sabah and three in Sarawak.

The jump in the number of marginal seats in Sabah was the result of the erosion of the Kadazandusun vote for BN, the by-product of a range of unresolved issues including the unabated flooding of the state with illegal immigrants.

Of the 51 BN marginal seats, 44 were in rural areas, which were once seen as BN’s so-called fixed deposit.

In contrast, there were 29 Pakatan Rakyat marginal seats: 20 in Malay-majority areas, four in Chinese majority areas and five in mixed seats.

Peaks and valleys in the east

Terengganu saw the highest turnout of voters, at 87%, while the two east Malaysian states recorded the lowest number of voters, with Sarawak at 75% and Sabah at 79%.

Due to the challenging terrain, poverty, and distance between homes and the polling stations, the voter turnout in Sarawak was low.

In Sabah, there was some fear about personal wellbeing, following the incursion by Sulu fighters and the month-long standoff.

Where the independents made their mark

Although they were generally wiped out in the past election, the presence of "independent" candidates was critical in at least six parliamentary seats.

That’s where they split the PR support and helped BN scrape through with less than half the vote.

For example, in Mas Gading, the victorious BN candidate obtained 41.1% of the vote and PR received 26.3%. The independent candidates snared 32.6%.

Moral of the story: PR has to do a much better job of working with local opposition parties in East Malaysia to resolve differences over seat allocation.

How did BN win in Perak?

PR won comfortably in every voting channel in Perak, from first-time voters to the greying generation and yet lost the state it won five years ago.

For first-time and young Malaysians, the margin was emphatic: 56.2% to PR and 43.3% to BN.

For voters aged 31-40, the gap was even wider 58.58% to PR, compared with 41.1% to BN.

For voters aged 41-50, it was 53.8% to PR and 45.7% to BN.

For those aged between 51 and 60, it was 58.2% to PR and 41.5% to BN. For those
older, PR still won handsomely, 53.7%, compared with 45.8% to BN.

So how did BN manage to keep Perak?

Through malapportionment. Or simply put, unequal representation.

For example, if one parliamentary seat has 10,000 voters and another has 100,000, the voters in the former have 10 times the value of the vote.

Malapportionment happens when large but sparsely populated rural areas are given equal representation to densely-packed urban areas. Sound familiar?