Malaysia’s 15th General Election: Ethnicity Remains the Key Factor in Voter Preferences
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Loading... - Wani Wahab
- 07 Apr 2023
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The results of Malaysia’s 15th General Election on 19 November 2022 revealed that ethnicity remains the key factor determining electoral outcome. Although ethnic issues were not the real focus of the election campaign, pre-election surveys and voting patterns show that Malaysian voters generally still choose along ethnic lines.
In this paper, we demonstrate that ethnicity remains the main marker of Malaysian politics. Identity and cultural dichotomies continue to underpin political choices and overshadow other variables such as economic, class, age, gender and region. Political parties devise election strategies and campaigns based on ethnic support, while voters, even as they put economic and governance issues top of their list of priorities, show a preference for parties that best suit their ethnic interests.
This postulation is supported by a series of pre-election surveys including national surveys conducted from 2020 to 2022, and daily tracking surveys carried out during the campaign period. A key finding is that Malaysian voters remain divided along ethnic lines, with more than 80% of non-Malay voters supporting Pakatan Harapan (PH) and almost a similar proportion of Malay voters rejecting that coalition.
While such a larger majority of Malay voters did reject PH, they were however divided between supporting either Barisan Nasional (BN) or Perikatan Nasional (PN). This situation was what eventually gave added advantage to PH in three-cornered fights between PN, BN and PH especially in marginal Malay-majority seats and non-Malay majority seats. With solid non-Malay support, minimal Malay support and the majority of Malay voters divided in their support for the other two coalitions, PH managed to win the most number of non-Malay majority and marginal Malay-majority seats.
In this paper, we focus our analysis on 165 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia. The politics in the two Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak have their own dynamics, and warrant a separate analysis. Read More…
