LATEST SURVEY SHOWS PAKATAN AHEAD BY 9 POINTS IN TANJUNG PIAI: ‘WE ARE QUITE CONFIDENT OF THE NUMBERS’ – PARTY SOURCE

PAKATAN Harapan is leading Barisan Nasional by nine percentage points in the Tanjung Piai by-election, according to the latest survey by Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE).Of 1,200 respondents, 53% said they would vote for PH’s Karmaine Sardini, while 44% picked BN’s Wee Jeck Seng.

The remaining 3% said they would vote for Berjasa’s Badhrulhisham Abd Aziz, Gerakan’s Wendy Subramaniam and independents Ang Chuan Lock and Faridah Aryani Abd Ghaffar.

The survey was conducted from November 9 to 11.

The survey results, which were shown to The Malaysian Insight by a party source, said BN still had the bigger share of Malay votes at 50% versus 48% for Pakatan.

This, however, is lower than their share of the Malay vote in the last general election as BN then collected 57% compared to 32% and 9% for Pakatan and PAS respectively.

The survey also found that support among the Chinese for PH did not drop precipitously to below 50% as initially thought. In the last general election, Chinese support for the pact was at 64% and IDE’s poll found that it has now slid a modest 3% to 61%.

“We are quite confident of the numbers, as they’re consistent with what we saw in the last general election,” said the party source.

Prior to GE14, IDE found that PH’s support level was around 46%, compared to 49% and 2% for BN and PAS respectively.

But the coalition pipped BN to the seat after collecting 46.3% of the vote, compared to the latter’s 45.2%. PAS picked up 6.5% of the vote.

The party source said that the study’s findings were consistent with their ground reports.

“Over the past two weeks, we have talked to thousands of voters here and found PH ahead by 10 points (as of Wednesday) after running the results through our simulation programme.”

Fence-sitters

With two days left before polling on Saturday, the focus will be on outstation voters and fence-sitters.

According to the survey, there was still a sizeable bloc of fence-sitters of around 12%.

When asked which party (as opposed to candidate) they supported, 44% picked PH while 41% and 3% chose BN and PAS respectively.

Chinese have the largest group of undecided voters, with 19% of them unsure who to vote for. Among Malay voters, 8% are unsure.

The poll found 49% of Malays surveyed picked BN, while 38% picked Pakatan. The remaining 5% identified themselves as PAS supporters.

Among the Chinese, 50% still wanted Pakatan while 27% picked BN. Another 3% said they preferred Gerakan.

IDE is expecting a 68%-70% voter turnout on Saturday, as 98% of those polled said they wanted to vote.

“We were a bit surprised by this. It’s the highest we have seen so far,” said the party source.

“But it will be decided by the 12% of fence sitters,” he added.

The by-election was called following the death of incumbent Dr Md Farid Md Rafik on Sept 21.

Tanjung Piai has 52,986 voters, consisting of 57.6% Malays, 41.4% Chinese and 1% Indians.

The fight for the parliamentary seat will be a six-way contest between PH, BN, Gerakan, Berjasa and two independents.

– https://www.themalaysianinsight.com/