FANTASTIC HARAPAN WINS BOTH BALAKONG, SERI SETIA WITH CONVINCING MARGINS: CLEAR SIGNAL NON-MALAY VOTERS WILL SHUN ANYTHING TO DO WITH PAS – AND WHILE UMNO MEMBERS WILLING TO VOTE FOR PAS, PAS MEMBERS WON’T RETURN THE FAVOR AS WHAT HAPPENED IN SUNGAI KANDIS

Pakatan Harapan’s Wong Siew Ki has won the Balakong by-election with a majority of 18,533 votes.

Wong bagged 22,508 votes, while MCA’s Tan Chee Teong received 3,975 votes.

While MCA managed to retain its deposit today – unlike on May 9 – its vote percentage did not increase significantly, going up by only 4.1 percent to 15 percent.

This is despite PAS campaigning for MCA in the by-election. PAS had previously bagged 11.6 percent of the votes in Balakong during the 14th general election.

DAP’s vote share, meanwhile, increased from 77.5 percent to 85 percent.

The by-election was called following the death of incumbent Eddie Ng in a road accident on July 20.

In the 14th general election, Ng defeated BN candidate Lim Chin Wah and PAS’ Mohamad Ibrahim Ghazali by a majority of 35,538 votes. – MKINI

Halimey is Seri Setia assemblyman

PAKATAN Harapan’s Halimey Abu Bakar has officially defeated PAS’ Dr Halimah Ali to win the Seri Setia state seat.

Halimey received 13,725 votes to Dr Halimah’s 9.698 votes.

Halimey won with a majority of 4,027 votes.

Voter turnout for the by-election was 44.1%. – the malaysian insight

At a glance: BN supporters likely to back PAS, but not necessarily the other way round

8.30pm – ANALYSIS – Due to the low turnout, a majority – the vote difference between the winner and runner up – is not a reliable measure for the Seri Setia and Balakong by-elections.

The turnout in Seri Setia was estimated at 44 percent (84.4 percent during GE14) and 43 percent for Balakong (88.2 percent during GE14).

A more reliable measure is the share of votes.

For BALAKONG, preliminary data suggested that although Pakatan Harapan won by a landslide during the last general election, the coalition was able to win a bigger share of the votes today.

Harapan’s vote share today was estimated to be 84.99 percent, up from 77.53 percent during GE14, an increase of about seven percent.

However, MCA’s share also improved. The party secured approximately 15.01 percent of the vote share, up from 10.9 percent during GE14, an increase of about 4 percent.

The uptick in vote share for both parties could be due to the fact that PAS took a 11.56 percent share of the votes during GE14.

Although PAS had endorsed MCA’s candidate, there is currently insufficient evidence at this point to suggest that their supporters voted for MCA.

Over at SERI SETIA, PAS appears to have benefitted from its alliance with BN.

During GE14, BN had secured the majority of advance and postal voters, while securing the majority in a particular voting district. From the unofficial results, it would appear that these voters are now backing PAS.

PAS dramatically increases its share of the votes to 41.28 percent, up from 10.38 percent during GE14.

This is even more than the 32.89 percent of the vote share secured by both PAS and BN during GE14.

Meanwhile, Harapan’s vote share was at 58.72 percent, down from 66.62 percent during GE14. – MKINI

MKINI /THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT