Sungai Bakap Part 2: Anwar govt bogged down

 While a competitive election, the results of the Sungai Bakap by-election in Penang this past weekend were to be expected; the incumbent Islamist party PAS secured a solid victory.

Voting trends and socioeconomic conditions clearly pointed to the outcome of rejecting governing PKR, as I noted in my earlier piece.

PAS, however, managed to double its majority to a comfortable 4,267 votes. This was due, in part, to a lacklustre campaign by the Madani government that did not inspire gains in support.

From the onset, PKR/Pakatan Harapan never controlled the political narrative and was on the defensive.

This was not helped by growing quiet anger among middle and upper-middle-class voters about policies that are targeting and demonising them and sentiments that youth are being left behind by meaningful policy neglect.

My findings analysing the polling station results and focus groups from the campaign - detailed below - suggest electoral gains by PAS were predominantly due to a significant share of Harapan’s traditional base and younger voters staying home.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s governing coalition was not able to pick up any new support and is now losing the support it used to have, largely from a drop in turnout. Voters are quietly protesting by not voting.

Importantly, support levels by ethnicity of those who cast their votes remained essentially the same as in the 2023 state election, suggesting that Penang’s ‘green wave’ remains intact but has not strengthened.

Despite spurious claims by PAS that it gained votes from non-Malays, voting remains deeply ethnically polarised with PAS winning support only from Malay voters.

Make no bones about the outcome: this was a PKR loss rather than a PAS victory. Neither DAP nor Umno should be blamed as the result predominantly reflects on PKR. After all, this was the party that controlled the campaign.

In fact, campaigning and voting trends suggest that the problems PKR are facing electorally are much more serious than a loss of a by-election.

The party is stuck, bogged down in the muck of its own making. The Sungai Bakap campaign shows that its strategy to woo voters is failing.

Erosion of Harapan’s base

Some analysts mistakenly suggest the drop in overall turnout to 63.5 percent was “apathy”. This is not correct.

The detailed analysis of turnout shows that the drop in voting was concentrated among particular groups: non-Malays, younger voters, and middle-class voters. These voters consciously decided not to vote.

The electoral impact is clear - PKR lost significant ground in Harapan’s base. Unlike in Kuala Kubu Baharu (KKB) where turnout drops were more limited, in Sungai Bakap, Chinese turnout dropped an estimated 22 percent to less than half of Chinese voters, to an estimated 43 percent.

While the Indian turnout reached half, at an estimated 52 percent, the drop from the state election was larger at an estimated 31 percent, nearly a third. These drops are significant and show that non-Malays are abandoning PKR/Harapan by not voting.

An age cohort lens shows that turnout dropped across age groups, but was especially concentrated among younger voters under 30, with an estimated 18 percent decline compared to 2023.

Of this younger group of voters, the drop was the steepest among Undi18 voters (18 to 20 years old), with an estimated decline of a whopping 28 percent compared to 2023.

What this means is that neither PKR nor PAS is convincing Malaysia’s youngest voters to support them.

A class lens on voting shows that disproportionately middle-class voters in Sungai Bakap were less inclined to turn out to vote compared to lower-income voters, an estimated 59 percent (a drop of an estimated 16 percent from 2023) compared to an estimated 69 percent (a drop of an estimated eight percent compared to 2023).

The pattern of turnout drops point to three lessons:

1) PKR has lost significant ground among non-Malays who are choosing not to give the party dominating the government of the day their support. Anwar’s myopic Malay focus – which, as will be shown below, is not working either – is now translating into the erosion of the Harapan traditional electoral base among non-Malays.

2) PAS is not winning over non-Malays as they stay home rather than vote for the Islamist party. In contrast, Malays come out and give PAS their protest votes against the government.

3) The Madani government’s policies that are targeting the middle class – fuel subsidies, for example – are having a negative electoral impact on PKR with efforts to win over less well-off voters not yielding results. Middle-class support for PKR in the by-election declined an estimated eight percent compared to 2023. Neither poor nor more well-off voters see the value of this policy, highlighting poor government implementation of this measure.

‘Green wave’ holds

While turnout was the big shift in the by-election, ethnic voting remained the same as in the state election.

PKR made a marginal two percent increase in the share of the Malay vote, but this did not reflect a meaningful increase in the number of Malay voters supporting the party compared to 2023 as fewer Malays voted in the by-election.

Malay turnout dropped an estimated five percent.

The consistency in ethnic voting shows a continued ethnic polarisation of the electorate. This pattern only highlights further the electoral costs of loss of non-Malay support for Harapan.

If the trends in both KKB and Sungai Bakap continue, parties in the Madani government will lose a considerable number of seats when a general election is called.

PAS continues to hold onto the overwhelming share of Malay voters. The ‘green wave’ however did not strengthen.

While Penang does point to a strong ‘green wave’ pattern, not all the voters are choosing PAS for its ‘green’ credentials. Instead, many are opting for PAS to protest against PKR/Harapan.

PAS also did not significantly gain Malay support across the community.

An in-depth analysis of age cohort voting of Malay voters in the by-election shows that PAS is winning over more youth, of those who are voting, but losing marginal shares among older Malay voters above 30 years old compared to 2023.

This variation suggests that PAS support is uneven across the Malay community despite its large majority.

Widening youth gap

The findings show that PKR/Madani government also had variation in its support across different age cohorts of all ethnic communities. The old BN pattern of winning over more older voters compared to younger ones persisted in this by-election.

What is striking however is the drop in support across all age cohorts, especially among younger voters. PKR only managed to win over a third of younger voters, a figure that also portends electoral problems ahead if this trend continues.

PKR has a serious widening gap in youth support. This is not surprising given the lack of effective policies geared towards the youth and disrespect being shown to younger people, who make up nearly half of the electorate.

Change is needed

Voting trends point to both worrying consistency and new concerns for Anwar’s government. If these trends continue, the Harapan coalition will likely not have the seats to claim the right to govern after the next general election.

These results show that voters are indeed increasingly rejecting PKR governance.

For PAS, the trends show strength, but reinforce the party’s weakness among non-Malays. They are gaining primarily as dejected, disappointed, and disengaged voters opt not to vote.

There were multiple causes of eroding support. Focus groups conducted in Sungai Bakap suggested that voting was primarily focused on weaknesses in PKR’s governance.

Voters spoke about national policies hitting the middle class without winning over stakeholders, arrogance in policy implementation, dismissal of legitimate public concerns about livelihoods, and repeated patterns of exclusion in governance.

Here, the traditional Harapan base mattered as Anwar’s government continued to take its core supporters for granted. Many of those voters stayed home. Younger voters were especially disenchanted with PKR governance.

There was also mention of local neglect and problems with water tied to weaknesses in the DAP state government. Among Malay voters, PKR was not seen as strong enough to raise local concerns at the state level.

They opted for the opposition PAS to have a louder voice.

The main concern across the electorate, however, rested with the economy, as many Malaysians are still recovering from the hardships of Covid-19 in a time of high inflation.

High growth and investment are not having an adequate positive impact on ordinary voters, especially in a more semi-rural constituency. Dissatisfaction was the norm, even among traditional supporters of Harapan.

Sadly, many reported that genuine empathy in governance is missing, with a serious and growing trust deficit in Anwar’s government. Few could identify any tangible reforms and fulfilment of electoral promises of the 15th general election.

A patronage-oriented campaign - aiming to buy over support with promises a la BN - did not work, as voters opted for likeable social media messaging and embraced the opportunity to send a message of discontent.

Even sadder, few felt the message would be heard by PKR. There was a perception that the campaign was about talk not substance, a harsh sentiment of indifference that was transposed to the government as well.

If PKR and the Madani government aim to get out of this political bog, the way forward should be for change, both in policies and in voter engagement, not mere self-reflection.

Too much mirroring of the past is occurring, and voters expect and deserve more. - Mkini

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BRIDGET WELSH is an honourary research associate of the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute, a senior research associate at Hu Fu Center for East Asia Democratic Studies, and a senior associate fellow at The Habibie Centre. Her writings can be found at bridgetwelsh.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.