Since the closing of the 13th Malaysian General Election, there has
been an ongoing debate of whether a Chinese tsunami or an urban tsunami
has caused the ruling coalition Barisan Nasional to suffer its worst
results in history.
The debate is getting ugly with some BN supporters
hurling all sorts of racist remarks towards Chinese community. PR
supporters defended Chinese community by claiming that a multi-racial
bulk of urban voters have actually voted against BN. It was a urban
tsunami in their opinion. I hope that by presenting a rigorous study of
the election data, I can settle the debate and put the matter to rest.
The data as well as the demographics statistics used in this study is obtained from SPR and RTM websites:
Other supporting data sources will also be specified in the course of the analysis.
Our
Prime Minister, Mr. Najib blamed on a Chinese tsunami for the loss of
support for the government in its worst ever general election results.
Is he correct? I am afraid he is.
In
the figure above, each data point represents a parliamentary
constituency. The y-axis is the percentage of BN votes = BN votes x 100 /
total votes.
(In constituencies where BN did not contest, I have taken the BN-friendly independent candidate as the BN candidate.)
The
x-axis is % Chinese registered voters in that constituency. We can see
clearly a vast drop of support for BN in Chinese-majority areas.
This drop of support has increased significantly from PRU12.
On the other hand, if we look at the same type of figure plotted for the Malay voters:
We
see no decrease of Malay votes for BN from PRU12. The drop of % BN
votes in the non-Malay-majority areas is likely due to the loss of
Chinese votes as shown in the previous figure.
So overall there has been no actual change in Malay support for PR.
Although PR were able to win or hold on to their seats because of the
continued support of Malay voters, without any significant increased
Malay support, it is impossible for them to capture Putrajaya and form
the federal government.
Let us look at the same type of figure again for Indian voters.
We
do see some indications that Indian voters have voted against BN.
Because Indian voters are minority in numbers, the trend we see here may
have been due to influences by Malay and Chinese voting trends.
However, we can be sure that Indian votes have not returned to BN.
Pakatan leaders as well as independent analysis groups have claimed there has been an "urban tsunami", are they correct?
The figure above shows the average % BN votes in all constituencies characterized by a same "metropolitan index".
Metropolitan
index of a constituency is defined as the logarithm of the total
population of the city or town associated with the constituency.
(The population data of Malaysian cities and towns is obtained from World Gazetteer
http://www.world-gazetteer.com/wg.php?x=1171193898&men=gcis&lng=en&des=gamelan&dat=32&geo=-152&srt=pnan&col=ohdq&pt=c&va=x)
Metropolitan index in general measures how urban that constituency is. Roughly speaking:
2, 3: rural
4: sub-urban
5, 6: urban
Areas like Johor Bahru and Kuala Lumpur have metropolitan index 6. Area like Sibuti in Sarawak receives metropolitan index 2.
From the bar chart, we can see that there is an urban-rural divide in
both general elections. With voters in categories 2,3,4 voted more for BN and voters in 5,6 voted more for the opposition.
However
the drop of support for BN from PRU12 is universal among all
metropolitan indices. Because an urban tsunami would require a
significant increased support of urban voters for the opposition
relative to the last general election, therefore it can be said that an
urban tsunami has not happened in this general election.
In the next figure, I use a different metric to measure how urban the constituency is.
The
figure above is a plot of % BN votes against 3G peneratration. 3G
penetration of a constituency is defined as the number of records in
Celcom mobile broadband coverage database that can be found to have an
address that matches the constituency. This data is obtained from the
broadband coverage lookup tool provided by Celcom website.
http://coverage.celcom.com.my/CelcomCoverageIIPub/faces/CelcomCoverage.jsp
The
higher the 3G penetration number, the more urban the constituency is,
the better the internet availability is in that constituency.
Again,
the data shows a clear urban-rural divide in both general elections.
The urban folks who have better access to internet have voted for the
opposition. However the drop of support for BN from PRU12 to PRU13
is universal in poor 3G areas and good 3G areas. Since urban-rural
divide is not new because it was present in the last general election,
we cannot call this general election a result of an urban tsunami.
At this point, a question can be asked: do the urban Malays support the opposition more than rural Malays?
In
this figure, I plotted % BN votes against % Malay registered voters.
The green points are constituencies with 3G penetration <= 18, the
purple points are constituencies with 3G penetration >= 18.
Factor
in the fact that Chinese voters in the non-Malay-majority areas have
voted overwhelmingly for oppositions, especially in urban areas. This
chart has not shown any clear urban-rural divide. In Malay-majority
areas, urban and rural seats actually show same % of BN votes. Therefore
BN did not receive its support from rural Malays alone.
In
conclusion. PR leaders have to accept the fact that they have won more
numbers of seats compared to PRU12 due to overwhelming Chinese support.
They
must accept that their general election strategy has failed completely
in wooing more Malay votes than PRU12, whether in urban or rural areas.
The opposition cannot form a federal government with high Chinese
support but with the same amount of Malay support. They must find a way
to break into BN Malay vote base, beat the dirty but effective
vote-buying tactics that BN has been using. They need to figure out why
PR manifesto has not appealed to the Malays more than cash handouts.
On
the other hand, PM Najib has gotten it right about losing Chinese
support. However his remarks of "Chinese tsunami" was made in a setting
that seems provocative and insensitive to the Chinese community. This
does not help in national reconciliation and has since invited
retaliative actions against the Chinese community such as the call for
boycotting Chinese businesses. BN should reflect on why BN has lost
Chinese support and perform better in future to gain it back.
EDIT:
A good analyst has pointed out that there were some outlier data points (total 9) in PRU12 data which had 100% BN votes. These were the seats where BN had had a walkover win. These seats where PR had given up would have likely yielded high BN votes if PR had contested. Taking them away will result in imbalance between PRU12 and PRU13 data. 100% is of course still too high. So I have adjusted 100% to 90% to make it more realistic. This adjustment had not affected any of the analysis and conclusions.
