A voter had her index finger dunked into ink before casting her vote for GE15 polling day at SMJK Chung Hwa Confucian, Penang. ( August 12, 2023 ) — K.T.GOH/The Star
PETALING JAYA: Flushed with success in several by-elections, some top leaders from Umno and Pakatan Harapan want their unity government alliance to work together in the 16th General Election (GE16).
Poring through the psephology of GE15 and the 15th state elections of August 2023 (SE15), The Star found a worrying trend, however – not all Barisan Nasional supporters gave their votes to Pakatan although they had campaigned together during the six state elections. (Psephology is the statistical study of elections and voting trends.)
To commemorate the second anniversary of GE15 today, The Star has over the past eight months reviewed figures culled from 38,000 polling streams in GE15 and 7,000 streams in the six state elections.
In studying the votes and seeking input from stakeholders, the effort has enabled The Star to detect trends that were evident in the past two polls and project how the votes could swing and tides change in the upcoming elections.
In the bloc's first electoral outing together during SE15, Barisan supporters voted for the alliance’s rival Perikatan Nasional, leading to catastrophic losses in Kedah, Penang, Kelantan, Terengganu, Selangor and Negri Sembilan.
The Star’s analysis of voting data in peninsular states showed that Barisan supporters had swung towards the Perikatan opposition coalition by a range of between 71.3% and 100% during SE15.
“The unity government alliance has a problem when it comes to getting Barisan, especially Umno, voters to support Pakatan,” said Kamarul Bahrin Zahid of the think tank Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE), which has analysed GE15 and SE15 as well as all by-elections since then.
Going by trends in the state elections and the Nenggiri (Kelantan) and Mahkota (Johor) by-elections in the peninsula, Barisan supporters will vote for Barisan if the candidate is from their coalition, said Kamarul Bahrin.
Also, Pakatan supporters will vote for Barisan candidates as seen in the Pelangai (Pahang) and Mahkota by-elections.
“Pakatan voters won’t vote for Perikatan. But the same cannot be said of Barisan supporters when the candidate is from Pakatan,” said Kamarul Bahrin.
Political analysts Datuk Dr Mazuki Mohamad and Khairul Syakirin Zulkifli have described the above behaviour as “vote transferability”.
This is the rate at which “supporters of party A, which forms a coalition with party B, will transfer their votes to party B in an election, and vice versa,” they wrote in an academic paper last year.
By comparing the results of GE15 and SE15, The Star was able to estimate the rate of transferability of votes between Barisan and Pakatan supporters when both contested the state polls as partners.
At one end of the transferability spectrum was Penang, where it is estimated that 71.3% of Barisan supporters transferred their votes to Perikatan, instead of voting for Pakatan.
In GE15, Barisan received 138,494 votes in Penang while Pakatan garnered 552,031.
Nine months later in SE15, Barisan's vote count went down to 47,164, partly because the coalition contested fewer seats due to its pact with Pakatan.
But the difference of 91,330 Barisan votes did not go to Pakatan, whose vote count also went down by 20,868 from GE15 in the state polls.
According to the theory of vote transferability, Barisan supporters should have shifted their votes to Pakatan in the state polls.
In comparison, Perikatan’s tally in SE15 increased to 287,874 from the 222,766 it received in GE15, a bump of 65,108, or 71.3% of the votes that Barisan lost which did not go to Pakatan.
This swing in support helped Perikatan parties, which before GE15, only controlled three state seats in Penang, to capture 11 in SE15.
IDE’s Kamarul Bahrin agreed that the increase in Perikatan’s vote was due to Barisan supporters and not from new voters added to the electoral roll.
“Even if Perikatan managed to get the support of all first-time voters that had been added to the electoral roll, their numbers were not large enough to account for their increased support.”
In Selangor, the transferability rate from Barisan to Perikatan was about 78.3% while in Negri Sembilan, it was 79.2%.
This allowed Perikatan to expand its territory in Selangor from five to 22 state seats while in Negri Sembilan, to win its first five seats.
At the other end of the vote transferability spectrum was Kedah, where the number of votes Perikatan gained in SE15 was more than what Barisan lost.
Perikatan captured 136,660 more votes while Barisan only lost 119,013 supporters.
This would mean that nearly all of Kedah’s Barisan supporters transferred their votes to Perikatan as Pakatan did not gain any additional votes, and indeed, lost 47,869 votes.
The lost Barisan votes led the coalition to lose all the 15 seats it contested in Kedah while Pakatan lost 18 of the 21 seats it contested.
In Kelantan, despite Barisan and Perikatan experiencing a drop in votes, Perikatan still won 43 out of 45 state seats as its proportion of the popular vote went up to 69.2% from 63.7% in GE15.
In Terengganu, Perikatan also increased its vote share in the state to 67.9% from 62.4%, allowing it to sweep all 32 state seats.
