Malaysia 2022 General Election Nov 19th

[jaichind]

https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/643836

"'GPS ready to partner with any coalition for a stable gov't'"

This is in theory.  In practice, they will want to ally with BN since PH is a competitor in Sarawak.  What GPS needs is for BN to win a plurality in  Peninsular Malaysia which is very likely so it can justify to itself that it is not doing backroom deals but only joining forces with the largest bloc. in Peninsular Malaysia.  What could complicate BN-GPS calculations is if PH emerges with a plurality in  Peninsular Malaysia.  In such a case a grand coalition of BN-PN would be needed to become the largest bloc in  Peninsular Malaysia and then GPS will come on board.

In the situation where BN-GPS along with Sabah BN seats can get a majority, UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamid will be in the driver's seat of the new government either as king or man behind the throne.  If a BN-PN grand alliance is needed then current UMNO PM Ismail Sabri Yaakob will be in greater control with UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamid in eclipse.   UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamid has a bunch of outstanding corruption cases against him which makes it easier for PH and PN to run against corruption as a theme.

[jaichind]

https://twitter.com/malaymail/status/1591355767919349760?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ct...

[Joseph Cao]

I (do not) love the smell of politicking in the morning. Forgot to post it last night but Ismail Sabri just so happens to be moving a big cash prize up to immediately before the election, out of the goodness of his heart of course:

The fourth phase of Bantuan Keluarga Malaysia (BKM) financial aid worth RM2.1 billion will be credited to 5.2 million recipients in stages over three days starting Nov 15, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

He said the payment which was originally scheduled to be made in December was being expedited to help the recipients prepare for the north-east monsoon predicted to start in the middle of this month.

He said each recipient would receive up to RM900 under their respective categories, adding that it was the final payment that the recipients were scheduled to receive this year.

I don't know if I should be sad that Lee Chong Wei and even Bridgette Welsh received mentions, but bond girl and Starfleet captain Michelle Yeoh didn't...

PKR incumbent June Leow

  Does anyone have any info or scuttlebut why she was dropped?  Mr. President Joseph Cao, do you have any inside info?

Oh no, there goes my HK cred!

Given time and space I think I could actually get a couple thousand words out of Ipoh alone, but those entries already had to be actively compressed as it was.

Re: June, I do know that people on the ground have corroborated public reports about elements within the local PKR not having anything against her personally but wanting an alternative. Prakash was voted in as division chairman over her earlier this year by about two hundred votes, a little after that controversy when the original election had to be canceled over lack of voting infrastructure. Then some local PKR leaders voted to submit Prakash’s name to the selection committee for consideration since he happened to be chairman now.

[Joseph Cao]

Federal Territories of: Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, and Labuan

P114 Kepong: Kepong has been surrounded by conflict throughout its history, from the flashpoints during the Selangor Civil War between the Hakka and the Cantonese to the Emergency-era new village of Jinjiang to the region's subsequent reputation for gangster operations to its current tug of war between richie rich developers from the south and the fairly large swathe of poverty that takes up most of the northern neighborhoods that comprise this seat.
As a monolithically Chinese seat it has been DAP for decades like most other formerly PEKEMAS seats (think GERAKAN, but not a prostitute); in point of fact this was the last PEKEMAS seat as its leader Tan Chee Koon weathered the 1974 drubbing. Those political fights are a thing of the distant past now. DAP's recent transplant Lim Lip Eng (who often gets confused for Ong Kian Ming, his fellow DAP MP with a shaved head representing an infamous neighborhood) will clear the MCA, GERAKAN, WARISAN, and independent opposition out with no trouble. PH hold

P115 Batu: Kepong's split personality spills over into the neighboring Batu, a thin slice from the Selayang and Batu Caves area down into the north-central Sentul neighborhoods covering a devil's brew of petty crime and performance art centers and federal public housing and developers running amok. In its past history it was the site of two Japanese rail complexes whose successful bombing in 1945 brought the end of the Occupation forward, and even today it has one of the higher Indian populations among the KL seats.
21-year-old P. Prabakaran became an accidental MP after the unexpected disqualification of PKR then-incumbent Tian Chua left the party endorsing his independent bid. Praba joined PKR after the election and ever since then has been bugged to let his predecessor return which only quietened down after Tian Chua's old ally Azmin defected; the selection committee, which still sees Azmins under its bed, has retained the incumbent this round. So Tian Chua is going rogue and contesting as an independent, part of the floodgates which have opened here as a total of ten candidates are contesting (deep breath): Praba, Tian Chua, Gerak Independent leader Siti Kassim who seems to be collecting support as a third choice, former MIC senator A. Kohilan Pillay, PAS Federal Territories commissioner Azhar Yahya, PEJUANG, PRM, and WARISAN gadflies, independent social media celebrity Cleo, and independent Too Gao Lan who is [obscenity censored] at this state of affairs. Seems only fitting that this is the longest entry so far, but the widespread perception on the ground is that a vote for anyone other than Praba will throw the seat away and that seems like it'll hold up on Election Day. PH hold

P116 Wangsa Maju: For an area that wasn't firmly settled until 1984 this is a remarkably crowded if anonymous place – the densest constituency in the country. But developers decided that supply would drive demand and built like mad, and the area grew so fast that the seat as currently drawn takes in barely half its namesake neighborhood.
PKR incumbent Tan Yee Kew, who is not contesting this time, has a similarly transient electoral history: holding a high position in MCA, then leaving the party and contesting in various areas under the PKR banner before landing in a seat notable for recent converts to that party. PKR secretary Zahir Hassan is facing a big name in ex-DAP ex-PKR ex-splinter party former MP Wee Choo Keong on the WARISAN ticket, along with UMNO division head Shafei Abdullah, Gerak Independent Raveendran Suntheralingeram, PAS senator Nuridah Mohd Salleh and PUTRA contractor Norzaila Arifin. This is one of PKR's safer seats in the city and I doubt there will be much trouble for Zahir. PH hold

P117 Segambut: The Beverly Hills of Kuala Lumpur has perhaps the most high-end population base in the area, from the national royal palace and its golf club on down to the slightly less affluent upper-middle-class burbs of Mont Kiara, Segambut, Desa Park, Damansara Heights, and Taman Duta that developers have taken over in the past decades. They've even swarmed into the low-income villages (and the affluent TTDI) on the Petaling Jaya side of Kiara Hill.
It is overall a highly plugged-in voter base that responds well to the work ethic of star DAP incumbent Hannah Yeoh, who won this when her party fellow Lim Lip Eng jumped north to Kepong in 2018. It's plugged-in enough that a video of a constituent roasting MCA local chairman Daniel Ling recently went viral. One gets the sense, just a small hint, that residents probably don't want Ling or KL Rotary Club president Prabagaran Vythilingam of GERAKAN. PH hold

P118 Setiawangsa: Split off from Wangsa Maju in 2004 in recognition of the area's fantastic growth, Setiawangsa is the heir to the old Minangkabau- and Orang Asli-heavy Setapak area and boasts high-performing schools and bedroom communities geared around TAR UC just over the seat boundary in Wangsa Maju, as well as the National Library and the MinDef.
This urban-Malay-heavy seat was ripe for a swing in 2018 when PKR's Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, who has since made voter and youth literacy a priority of his, took the UMNO incumbent out by an unexpectedly large margin. He's sitting relatively pretty for the faceoff with UMNO divisional leader Izudin Ishak and a PPBM ex-TV anchor, Nurul Fadzilah Kamaluddin, and PEJUANG and two independent small fry. Probably. PH hold

P119 Titiwangsa: From the confluence of the Gombak and Klang Rivers, the original Chinese miners set out to work in the Ampang tin mines to the east. A road was built along that path under Yap Ah Loy that still sees heavy daily commutes by those living in this L-shaped constituency, which stretches along the Klang River and the Ampang Road from Kampung Baru (the last village in Kuala Lummpur) to the city border, passing several embassies, with the other arm of the L going south as far as the Cheras suburb of Maluri and picking up upscale areas on the way.
Incumbent Rina Mohd Harun has faced accusations of unprofessionalism and neglect of her constituency on top of her defection after defeating UMNO finance minister Johari Abdul Ghani on the PPBM ticket in 2018. She is not contesting here, going to Sepang instead, which clears the way for a Johari comeback against Shah Alam MP Khalid Samad, contesting for AMANAH, and PAS central committee member Rosni Adam and PEJUANG's former UMNO big fish Khairuddin Hassan. Johari won narrowly in 2013 when the wind wasn't at BN's backs as it is now, and that might be the deciding factor although Khalid is holding his own in the Kampung Baru land issue debate. BN gain from PN

P120 Bukit Bintang: The confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers was what gave Kuala Lumpur its name (and still periodically floods it), made it an attractive spot for tin miners to dismebark, and fixed a location for Chinese traders to sell provisions to them. The ethnic enclaves in that first settlement are still visible today though the city has long since integrated around them: the Chinese around Petaling Street and Pasar Seni Market, the Indians around Brickfields, and the Malays around Masjid Jamek's Jalan Tun Perak and points east.
All this within a seat that ping-pongs from the KL city center to Merdeka Square to St. Mary's to Chow Kit to the famous towers to Berjaya Times Square and a long, long way down into the still-kind-of-a-village Salak South. If you launched a rocket off the top of the KL Tower it would run out of fuel before leaving this seat. DAP incumbent Fong Kui Lun has held the seat quietly for five terms with no trouble and Federal Territory MCA Youth chief Tan Teik Peng and PPBM's Edwin Chen, if they retain their deposits, might go buy tickets to the top of the KL Tower and launch a rocket off it for the banter; the other Rocket isn't going anywhere in central Kuala Lumpur. PH hold

P121 Lembah Pantai: The point where Kuala Lumpur bleeds into its largest satellite town would always have had a transitional feel to it, and Lembah Pantai brings everything from upper-class Bangsar to federal housing estates in Kerinchi to the UMNO boys of Bukit Aman police HQ at its north end, which was moved into the seat last redelineation. Roti tissue, the intensely decadent twist on roti canai by a Petaling Jaya restaurant that sold like hotcakes in Bangsar as it migrated into central Kuala Lumpur (just a stone's throw away from the soaring KL towers it imitates), is as good an encapsulation as any for this seat.
PKR incumbent Fahmi Fadzil, replacing Nurul Izzah when she left to defend Fortress Anwar in 2018, has tried his best to work the lower-income parts and got a good swing to him there; we'll see if that holds up against former national footballer Ramlan Shahean Askolani of UMNO, landscape architect association president Fauzi Abu Bakar of PAS, and newbie Noor Asmah Mohd Razali of PUTRA. The seat gave a majority to PKR even in closer climates and even in multi-corned fights, so it probably will. PH hold

P122 Seputeh: The Old Klang Road by the river runs southwest out of the city, passing areas to the east that developed in two stages: Chinese neighborhoods sprung up by the rubber estates just beyond KL's outskirts in the 1960s, and in the 1990s the overgrown trash heaps of Bukit Jalil and Sri Petaling were overhauled for the Commonwealth Games.
That roughly corresponds to the waves of Chinese voting trends which have seen five-term DAP incumbent Teresa Kok steadily blow her vote share out since 1999, most recently coming within 25 votes of 90 percent. That streak probably ends next week but all the good luck in the world still won't save the God of Fortune (yes, a real candidate) and the other MCA, GERAKAN and independent challengers. PH hold

P123 Cheras: Tin to rubber to commerce to insane housing development is a familiar trajectory for a lot of Kuala Lumpur-area seats, but the "Mini Hong Kong" tower blocks that grabbed headlines recently are a cut (several dozen floors of cut actually) above the usual stories. The seat itself runs from the city side of the Cheras area – the inferior side, I am reliably informed – through the low-income areas along Cheras Road as it jogs west into Pudu and stops short of the cemetery hill.
DAP's eight-term incumbent Tan Kok Wai has held the seat for its entire existence and served its predecessor for two terms before that. The argument against him on "new blood" grounds is being made by MCA Federal Territory youth secretary Mike Chong and PPBM's Ruby Chin. I suppose they might need to step it up a little to cut into the North Korea margins that DAP gets here. PH hold

P124 Bandar Tun Razak: Like the middle finger to its north, this seat stretching down to Sungai Besi bears the second Prime Minister's name thanks to the government-friendly proclivities of the Congolese ops veterans who founded the settlement. Despite this Bandar Tun Razak as a seat never voted for UMNO while his son led it, but likewise has caused some heartburn for PKR; first Khalid Ibrahim got pushed out in 2014 over the Kajang Move, then his successor Kamarudin Jaffar jumped to PPBM during the Sheraton Move.
Local PKR is understandably spooked by all this hopping and has brought the picture of stability in against Kamaruddin to reassure the troops: former president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail. MCA division chairman Chew Yin Keen is all but invisible here and has faced some grumbling from UMNO grassroots who wanted their own party to contest, forgetting that their 2018 candidate had to be pulled over an eleventh-hour drug scandal. No matter. Wan Azizah herself faces the usual carpetbagging accusations but the seat is fundamentally PKR and that should hold. PH gain from PN

P125 Putrajaya: The federal capital in southern Selangor was planned, built, and governed by the same UMNO that still rules the roost in the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara as it did sixty-five years ago. The parks are very beautiful, the city itself is organized but boring, and the government does very swampy things, which averages out to about par – a bar the government can't even clear most days, something unlikely to change this election.
Something else unlikely to change is its MP, convicted-then-successfully-appealed four-term incumbent Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, who remains one of UMNO's giants despite (or because of) the graft and corruption charges. Coming from the party that employs most of his constituents has always given him a big boost and the opposition of PN education minister and senate member Radzi Jidin and PKR's wheelchair-bound UM professor Noraishah Mydin Abdul Aziz (and the BERJASA and two independent nonentities) won't change that. BN hold

…and a jump to…

P166 Labuan: We end where we started, with an island that's seen more than its share of conflict. The British absorption of most of the Brunei Kingdom's land in Borneo arguably started with the cessation of Labuan island which they promptly converted into a base for offshore military support. Several wars later Labuan and its six attendant islets now play host to offshore tourism, offshore drilling, and offshore financial activities of every kind.
Like Putrajaya the governing body is a federally owned corporation that has worked to the benefit of its then-CEO, two-term incumbent Rozman Isli, who nevertheless defected to WARISAN after GE14 and is defending under those colors. Although the actual WARISAN candidate last time round came decently close he will have a tough fight against UMNO division head Bashir Alias and PPBM division head Suhaili Abdul Rahman, who like Rozman and Bashir used to be the UMNO division head. That good old boy network should ultimately return this to UMNO even with AMANAH division head Datuk Dr Ramli Tahir, PBM division head Dayang Rusimah @ Raynie Datuk Mohd Din, and PEJUANG probably-not-the-division-head Datuk Seri Ramle Mat Daly in the mix. BN gain from WARISAN

Running tally: BN 52 (+24), PH 56 (-3), PN 17 (-16), GTA 1 (-2), PBM 0 (-2), WARISAN 0 (-1)

[Novelty]

Ooooh,  PH has the lead, but N9 and Malacca will probably bring BN back to neck-to-neck.  Johore will probably give BN the lead in the Big horse.

BTW Mr. President Joseph Cao, how confident are you on the call in Titiwangsa?

[jaichind]

https://mysinchew.sinchew.com.my/20221107/pas-only-chinese-candidate-says-hes-buddhist/

"PAS' only Chinese candidate says he's Buddhist "

PAS has a Chinese Buddhist candidate in a majority Chinese district.  Seems to me PN should have given the seat to GERAKAN

[jaichind]

Out of the 46 UMNO winners in 2018

a) 20 will run for UMNO this time around
b) 6 defected to PPBM and will run for PPBM
c) 2 will run for PAS
d) 1 will run as a UMNO rebel
e) 1 died in office
f) 1 is in prison (Najib Razak)
g) 4 defected to PPBM but will not run for re-election or were dropped by PPBM (1 of them to make way for a PAS candidate)
h) 11 dropped by UMNO or not seeking re-election (most of them are part of a purge by UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamidi looking to get rid of people that oppose his leadership)

Note that one of the 20 that will run for re-election is, as mentioned before, Khairy Jamaluddin who was also on the UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamidi purge and was not re-nominated in his old UMNO safe seat but forced to run in in a marginal seat (which he most likely will win anyway.)

[jaichind]

Out of 41 PKR winners in 2018

a) 24 will run for re-election for PKR
b) 5 defected to PPBM and will run for PPBM
c) 3 defected to PBM and will not run for re-election
d) 1 defected to PBM and will run for re-election as PBM
e) 5 were dropped by PKR high command
f) 3 choose to retire

[Oryxslayer]

Okay, so I haven't been paying attention to this as much as I should, given that it was one of my earliest forays into international election mapping. I was totally under the impression that BN/UMNO would resurge with a decent majority - no landside but certainly the keys to power. Maybe parallels to Japan 2009 and 2012.

However, the Merdeka poll showed up in my timeline and I guess things are close again?

Also, I see that malapportionment remains a thing, but has redistricting occurred in any seats since 2018? Right before that election there was some gerrymandering in Port Dickson.

[Joseph Cao]

BTW Mr. President Joseph Cao, how confident are you on the call in Titiwangsa?

The media is swarming Kampung Baru which makes sense, it's the most prominent flashpoint, but I would have liked a more comprehensive look at the junction and the southern arm of the L and that doesn't look like it's forthcoming. They usually want a horse race so their coverage pretty much uniformly breaking toward Johari seems telling.

Okay, so I haven't been paying attention to this as much as I should, given that it was one of my earliest forays into international election mapping. I was totally under the impression that BN/UMNO would resurge with a decent majority - no landside but certainly the keys to power. Maybe parallels to Japan 2009 and 2012.

However, the Merdeka poll showed up in my timeline and I guess things are close again?

Also, I see that malapportionment remains a thing, but has redistricting occurred in any seats since 2018? Right before that election there was some gerrymandering in Port Dickson.

The segment of voters that will voice support for this coalition or other but not actually vote because they can't or don't want to probably balloons this election, on the basis of weather or apathy or the overseas roadblocks that the EC is going all out with this time (Malaysians in Saudi Arabia won't get their ballots until the night of the election itself! Disgrace), and that would disproportionately cut into PH's polling share if so. Plus PN's own highly inefficient vote distribution would cancel out the surge in support they're getting.

I don't see anything structural that doesn't advantage BN and the other two coalitions won't change in one week the narrative of voter apathy that has been on the ground for years now.

Also no, AFAIK PH didn't raise the redelineation issue, probably worried about how it would look so soon after taking power, and the EC keeps telling Parliament that because of Najib's fit of panic in 2018 they're not allowed to redraw anything until the eight-year period is up. That would be 2026 for most states. Could be two general elections from now for all we know.

“If it is in pursuant to Clause (2) Article 113 of the Federal Constitution, the EC can conduct the redelineation exercise once every eight years from the last date of completion of the previous exercise.

“So, the eight-year period for a redelineation exercise for Sarawak will end in 2023, for Sabah it will end in 2025 and for Peninsular Malaysia it will end in 2026,” he said.

[Joseph Cao]

Negeri Sembilan

P126 Jelebu: Northern Negeri Sembilan is a wide and hot and dry place, thanks to the mountains that cover the western half of the Jelebu seat as they march through the state; former new villages and small towns vanish into the forests and rubber plantations around that shrink by the day as more forest in the flatlands is cleared. It is not a place that has been particularly hospitable to the opposition, with current Dewan Negara president Rais Yatim calling this his home base.
So AMANAH did well to run UMNO's Jalaluddin Alias within five points last round, and emboldened by this are fielding state assembly speaker Zulkefly Mohamad Omar against him; some guy from PPBM Zaharuddon Baba Samon (who has literally zero Google search results) and PUTRA lawyer Ahmad Fakri Abu Samah round off the ballot. But they have mountains to climb in a climate and terrain that doesn't favor any of them. BN hold

P127 Jempol: The UMNO belt in eastern Negeri Sembilan continues to hold strong here thanks to the transience that characterized Jempol's history, from being a key part of the pre-Malacca era shortcut from the western Peninsular to the east coast to the failed resettlement operation in Bahau. Top-down industries like timber and palm oil continue to dominate this area of the state marching east to the Johor border.
UMNO incumbent Mohd Salim Sharif was also dropped this time but seems fine with it; not that it particularly matters since former chief minister Isa Samad's local machine will run with or without him and is fully backing assemblyman Shamsulkahar Deli against AMANAH state women's chief Norwani Ahmat, PUTRA deputy president Mohd Khalid Mohd Yunus, and a PPBM nonentity. That UMNO belt seems likely to hold. BN hold

P128 Seremban: Administrative operations that date from the British entry into the simmering Negeri Sembilan area helped to push the tin settlement of Seremban forward to become the biggest regional town, which has attracted further development ever since. Much of this flows into the state capital via the web of highways from the northwest that more or less delineate this seat. Convenient for those coming in to try the city's famous siew bao.
DAP leader Anthony Loke holds down one of those seats with high-50s vote share that would put it on the playing field in a situation like the Khairy-Anthony clash that was rumored a while ago. His current opposition of MCA’s Wong Yin Ting, a private school headmistress, PAS’s Mohd Fadli Che Me, PEJUANG’s Mohamad Jani Ismail, and an independent is piddling in comparison and he should be fine at home as he goes out stumping with other DAP candidates. PH hold

P129 Kuala Pilah: It should be noted that Negeri Sembilan's history is chock full of this kind of uneasy peace between disparate sides. One such confederation of nine Minangkabau chiefs gave the state its name when it was established in 1773 under the leadership of Raja Melewar; five remain in the state today and pieces of all their territory made it into the Kuala Pilah seat that houses the royal town of Seri Menanti where his descendants still occupy that position. The other medium towns round out the seat with the usual disparate collection of industry.
UMNO's one vulnerability in this part of the state was on full display in 2018 when Eddin Syazlee Shiith (with one i, blame the profanity filter for censoring his actual surname) flipped it by barely 200 votes with an energetic performance in those communities, then proceeded to pull a Pak Lah at a local graduation ceremony after defecting away with the rest of PPBM in 2020. Eddin is defending, UMNO assemblyman Adnan Abu Hassan and PKR information chief Nor Azman Mohamad both want the seat back, and state WARISAN leader Azman Idris and PUTRA's Kamarulzaman Kamdias are here to play spoiler; expect Adnan to send Eddin back to electoral naptime. BN gain from PN

P130 Rasah: Seremban's start came from the Rasah tin mines to its immediate west; the supposed "leading edge of development" that is its counterpart today has given us the lazy developers' brainchild and navigational monstrosity of Seremban 2 lying on the other side of the North-South Expressway from its parent city. A questionable community of interest links this Seremban sequel (and the finale in the trilogy, Seremban 3) together with the rest of southern Seremban to bedroom communities around KLIA to the west.
Cha Kee Chin of DAP is junior as incumbents go but enjoys the safest opposition seat in the state. MCA youth legal chief Ng Kian Nam and state GERAKAN chief David Choong are getting the usual fawning press from the usual suspects, which is the most they'll get out of GE15 apart from their deposits. PH hold

P131 Rembau: The landscape around Federal Route 1 and the North-South Expressway are dotted with institutions and new developments like the world's largest Milo factory – but a very ostentatious tail up to a FELDA settlement on the other side of Seremban reminds us of which part of the constituency really talks as far as UMNO is concerned. It's something that UMNO deputy president and state supremo Mohamad Hasan keeps a careful eye on from his base in the seat.
Incumbent Khairy Jamaluddin, as is becoming extremely clear from comments by the UMNO big boys, was pushed out despite serving diligently for three terms because Mat Hasan wants to move up to Parliament; the fact that he chose Sungai Buloh out of the choices offered him and is poised to flip that seat based on the national goodwill toward him doesn't change that. Mat Hasan, retaining that same kind of goodwill in this state and especially in this area from his time as chief minister, should still cruise against former Youth Council president Jufitri Joha of PKR, community mobilization president Nazree Yunus of PPBM, former PPBM division head Ramly Awaluddin now running under PEJUANG, and one of just two PSM candidates this election, T. Subramaniam. BN hold

P132 Port Dickson: The Negeri Sembilan coast is dominated by the army training bases and heavy-footfall beaches and island camps of Port Dickson, and somehow this district covering its entire stretch finds room for both oil refineries (following in the settlement's original purpose of charcoal production) and the clear skies required for the largest telescope in Southeast Asia.
The original British WWII plans for a landing here never came to fruition but the seat did provide a landing point for Anwar Ibrahim's return to Parliament in 2018; as he is now taking the war up to Tambun the seat will be defended for PKR by the state's chief minister Aminuddin Harun against MIC's P. Kamalanathan (late of Hulu Selangor), PAS state commissioner Rafei Mustapha, film direction Ahmad Idham contesting for PEJUANG, and an independent. There is a reason Anwar chose this seat to guarantee his election even with the big gun factor that Aminuddin also has; let's leave it at that. PH hold

P133 Tampin: It's the southernmost march of the Titiwangsa Range, the origin point of maman leaf rendang, the junction of the west coast and east coast rail lines on the border with Johor, and the beginning of the end for the WWII Australian operation that failed to stop the Japanese march into Johor. There are realistic paths forward for the economy here but so far Tampin's residents like much of the surrounding region haven't seen much of the vaunted Malaysia Vision Valley arrive.
It's shaping up to be a major battle again; AMANAH's Hasan Bahrom is retiring from a very marginal seat and leaves it in the hands of Penang assemblyman Muhammad Faiz Fadzil against assemblyman Isam Mohd Isa of UMNO and returning PAS man Abdul Halim Abu Bakar as well as a PEJUANG gadfly. I really cannot see a realistic path back for AMANAH here. BN gain from PH

Running tally: BN 57 (+26), PH 59 (-4), PN 17 (-17), GTA 1 (-2), PBM 0 (-2), WARISAN 0 (-1)

[Joseph Cao]

Melaka

P134 Masjid Tanah: Melaka originally drew notice from the Meningkabau and the other minority workers (then the Protugese, then the Dutch, then the British) for its position by the sea. And despite the mosque that gave Masjid Tanah town its name, the seat of that name still turns to beach tourism and fishing and the seaside oil refineries for its economic base.
Federally administered industry is a recipe for UMNO dominance in this seat that only broke when incumbent Mas Ermieyati Samsudin defected to PPBM. UMNO divisional youth chief Abdul Hakim Abdul Wahid is leading the charge to regain a safely UMNO seat with MUDA's Perak chief Muthalib Uthman and PEJUANG local Handrawirawan Abu Bakar fighting for third or even second place. Mas Ermieyati looks likely to go down with the ship. BN gain from PN

P135 Alor Gajah: This is a confusing area. Alor Gajah occupies the remainder of its eponymous district after Masjid Tanah took the western half during its creation in 2004, with an added arm to the Johor border: a grab bag of northern Melaka technical colleges and the Honda and Julie's Biscuits factories and palm oil and illegal logging in gradually retreating forests and real estate developers partially responsible for that illegal logging in those gradually retreating forests.
The above is decidedly not a recipe for the massive 30-point swing that PPBM's Mohd Redzuan Md Yusof got in 2018. His defection complicates matters as BN and PH, each having their reasons for badly wanting the seat back, are fielding very strong candidates: UMNO information chief Shahril Sufian Hamdan and AMANAH former chief minister and state PH chairman Adly Zahari. It is turning out to be the proverbial elephant fight. Adly has the disadvantage of this seat being the site of an all-out war between local DAP and PKR over who would get to contest, drawing Rafizi into it, only to see the nomination go to the man who courted frogs and inadvertently caused PH's wipeout in the state last year. The ant-tier BERJASA candidate won't stop that fight from happening, but the PH internal discord definitely hamstrings their ability to leverage the strange swing they got last election. Expect UMNO to be the last elephant standing. BN gain from PN

P136 Tangga Batu: For all Melaka's reputation as a tourist trap it is remarkable how localized those places are. Tangga Batu constituency is a triangle directly west of the city that neatly avoids all of its urban areas. Its fourteenth-century description as "sandy, saltish… the fields are infertile and the crops are poor" might give the lie to the contemporaneous origin story of nasi lemak, in which a local widow's daughter accidentally spilled coconut milk into a boiling pot of rice, but the area has indisputably progressed beyond that characterization since then with fields and farms and a military camp where they probably could do with some nasi lemak every now and again.
PKR's Rusnah Aluai won this by a comparatively narrow six points in the Melaka wave and made a horrific gaffe in Parliament over the Timah controversy. It is not something that inspires confidence in PKR's prospects; nor should her main opponent, MCA state chairman, assemblyman, Senate member, and incumbent deputy minister Lim Ban Hong, who has to be heavily favored here against PEJUANG's Lt. Col. (rtd.) Ghazali Abu, PAS's Bakri Jamaluddin, and the usual independent. I mentioned the MCA strategy of fielding heavyweights specifically in seats almost guaranteed to flip and nowhere else. This is one example of why that will pay dividends for MCA next week. BN gain from PH

P137 Hang Tuah Jaya: The legend of Hang Tuah has become a rallying cry for many Malaysians of a certain bent and it served as a warning in 2018 when Shamsul Iskandar Mohd Akin of PKR saw his seat renamed after the nebulous state administrative capital carrying that name, as it dropped the Chinese neighborhoods west of the Melaka River. It remains a blatantly gerrymandered seat that meanders from the riverfront industrial park to the Mamee Double-Decker factory out in Ayer Keroh to a fat tail out to palm oil country in the east.
Despite UMNO's hopes of the seat returning to its prior loyalties Shamsul Iskandar hung on by 8,000 votes that election against chief minister Ali Rustam, the giant he killed in 2013. But he's taking his giant-killing skills to Bagan Datuk and leaving the seat for PKR youth chief Adam Adli to defend against UMNO senate member Ridhwan Ali, son of Ali Rustam, plus PPBM's Mohd Azrudin Md Idris and PEJUANG's former Kelaka Bar chairman Ikhzan Sheikh Salleh. It is very hard to say with certainty how this develops but the loss of Shamsul is going to be keenly felt among PKR and Ridhwan Ali still has dad's machinery to count on. I'll tip it to UMNO. BN gain from PH

P138 Kota Melaka: Basically every Malaysian knows Melaka's history and the successive fingerprints left on this city at the mouth of the Melaka River by the Indonesians, the Sultanate, the Portugese, the Dutch, the British, and the current Malaysian state – in history classes if not as part of the massive tourist traffic that goes through the city every year and far eclipses its status as the state's administrative capital. The clock tower, the red Christ Church, the A Famosa, the dozens of museums, and the port itself are the nucleus of this seat extending up and down the coast and an additional arm through the Chinese neighborhoods mentioned above as far as Taman Merdeka.
Those added neighborhoods jumped the DAP vote share by an additional 10 percent from GE13, and incumbent Khoo Poay Tiong alone among the five non-BN members of Parliament from Melaka can expect to keep their seat painted red next week when he blows out his MCA, GERAKAN and independent opposition. PH hold

P139 Jasin: Most of eastern Melaka's flat land falls within the catchment area of the Kesang River and its freshwater supply for the state, and this part of the state therefore confines itself mainly to FELDA (which doesn't pollute waterways at all, no sir) palm oil and durian farms and the like; its lone industrial areas are on the coast and just beyond the river's source in Jasin town near the seat's northern boundary.
UMNO's three-term incumbent Ahmad Hamzah, the only current BN member of Parliament from Melaka, is also not returning next session. In Ahmad's place UMNO divisional deputy and former assemblyman Roslan Ahmad can expect their catchment area to bring in more fellow coalition members next week when he wins in a walk against PAS state commissioner Zulkifli Ismail, AMANAH's Harun Mohamed, and PEJUANG's Mohd Daud Nasir. BN hold

Running tally: BN 62 (+30), PH 60 (-6), PN 17 (-19), GTA 1 (-2), PBM 0 (-2), WARISAN 0 (-1)

[jaichind]

Despite the fact that BN fortunes has clearly declined last couple of weeks, especially after the bad PR from UMNO Prez Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's purge, I do not see a real path for PH majority without somehow getting either PN or GPS onboard.

In Sarawak I do not see pro-PH forces winning more than 7 seats out of 31 and more likely will be below 7.
In Sabah I do not see PH and WARISAN together getting more than 12 seats and more likely than not it will be below 12.

This means that PH will have to win at least 95 Peninsular Malaysia seats.  This is why you hear from PH sources that they think they can win 90-100 seats in Peninsular Malaysia which is based on this math.

Even in the most ideal scenario where BN and PN evenly split the conservative Malay vote that only helps PH in seats where the Malays number less than 70% of voters.

Out of the 165 seats in Peninsular Malaysia, 67 seats where Malays make up more than 70% of the voters.  Almost all of them will be won by BN or PH regardless of how the Malay vote split, even evenly.  I can see PH winning 3-4 out of these 67 seats for special reasons of these seats.

Out of the 165 seats in Peninsular Malaysia, 98 seats where Malays make up less than 70% of the voters.  Out of this list of 98

a) A couple of seats have a high aborigine vote share which will go UMNO so they are de facto above 70% Malay
b) there are a few which have UMNO heavyweights
c) there are a few seats where there are MIC heavyweights or MIC is running in seat with high Indian vote share
d) At least one PPBM heavyweight (Muhyiddin Yassin)
e) A few seats where MCA is strong due to seat fit or MCA heavyweight
f) A few seats where the PH candidate quality is suspect

All this puts around 15 out of the 98 off the table for PH in the best of scenarios.  That leaves PH at around 85 seats in Peninsular Malaysia in a best case scenario which would put them 10 seats off majority even if things go their way in Sarawak and Sabah.

The conclusion is that PH will need to rope in PN or GPS to get to a majority after the election and much more likely PN and GPS will go with BN.  PN due to fear or losing the Malay vote to a BN in opposition.  GPS because PH remains an opposition force in GPS in Sarawak.

[Novelty]

I'm sure everyone has seen this supposed polling result where BN will not get a lot of seats.  I have no idea if it's made up or not.

[jaichind]

I'm sure everyone has seen this supposed polling result where BN will not get a lot of seats.  I have no idea if it's made up or not.

Wow.  Amazing results. This poll has a PN surge that gives PN wins in almost all BN-PN marginals and takes enough Malay votes away from in BN-PH marginals to give PH wins in almost all of them.

In 2018 same poll had: PH  76   BN 62  PAS 2   PH/BN tossup 23  BN/PAS tossup 2

So in 2018 they overestimated BN.  This time around they might have overcompensated.

Another caveat is UMNO has a lot less money this year so my understanding is they will deployed their cash in the last week which this poll will not take into account.

Still it looks like Zahid 2022 might end up being a rerun of Theresa May 2017 fiasco

[jaichind]

https://www.nst.com.my/amp/news/politics/2022/11/850590/zahid-ge15-voter-sentiment-studies-tend-play-favourites

Refers to a Endeavor-MGC survey that has

PH 67 to 82
BN 58 to 73
PN 10 to 40

Another poll that has PN outperforming

[Logical]

It's possible I guess, if youth turnout remains at 2018 levels.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How much more poorly does BN do among young voters, overall?

[Novelty]

How much more poorly does BN do among young voters, overall?

Nobody knows for sure.  This is the first election that 18-20 year olds are able to vote and that will skew the youth vote... if they come out to vote.

[jaichind]

How much more poorly does BN do among young voters, overall?

My sense is that 18-20 year olds should vote like their parents so it will be a wash.  Although I think many of these votes are pursuable.  Various college mock elections, even those which are heavy Malay, seems to give PH landslides but that might just be a case where only the politically active college students participated.   

[Novelty]

https://www.nst.com.my/amp/news/politics/2022/11/850590/zahid-ge15-voter-sentiment-studies-tend-play-favourites

Refers to a Endeavor-MGC survey that has

PH 67 to 82
BN 58 to 73
PN 10 to 40

Another poll that has PN outperforming

That is based on, and I quote from the article:

The study, which was conducted between Oct 8 and 20 last year,

I won't even bother with those numbers since the survey was done in 2021, i.e. 13 months ago.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

How much more poorly does BN do among young voters, overall?

My sense is that 18-20 year olds should vote like their parents so it will be a wash.  Although I think many of these votes are pursuable.  Various college mock elections, even those which are heavy Malay, seems to give PH landslides but that might just be a case where only the politically active college students participated.   

I realy realy doubt that would be the case, age-divides in malasiayn politics are very real. Young non-malay Malaysians will almost never vote for the MCA or MIC, while older ones can be convinced to do so by the right canidate.

[jaichind]

https://www.nst.com.my/amp/news/politics/2022/11/850590/zahid-ge15-voter-sentiment-studies-tend-play-favourites

Refers to a Endeavor-MGC survey that has

PH 67 to 82
BN 58 to 73
PN 10 to 40

Another poll that has PN outperforming

That is based on, and I quote from the article:

The study, which was conducted between Oct 8 and 20 last year,

I won't even bother with those numbers since the survey was done in 2021, i.e. 13 months ago.

Ah ... good catch.

[jaichind]

Malaysia Declares Public Holiday on Friday, Saturday for Polling

[Joseph Cao]

Spectacularly broke the character limit on this one.

Johor

P140 Segamat: Fleeing from the Portugese sack of Melaka, an administrator of the Sultanate is said to have named the Segamat River after its refreshing water; today those exiting Melaka via Federal Route 1 will be greeted by oceans of palm oil plantations instead. With the exception of a corridor from the university town Jementah near its southern border and the outskirts of Segamat town proper in the east, these dominate the villages and settlements of this seat.
Edmund Santhara Kumar Ramanaidu has had a similar political shift, flipping the historically MIC seat as a first-time PKR candidate who then defected to PPBM and then PBM, though retaining his status as the wealthiest MP throughout. He is unexpectedly not defending, which means MIC treasurer M. Ramasamy will duke it out with state PKR Youth chief R. Yuneswaran, PPBM's P. Ponnusamy, and PUTRA's Syed Hairoul Syed Ali. The BN tides are rising in this area and Ramasamy seems likely to make it. BN gain from PBM

P141 Sekijang: A fair number of Segamat town's famous fruits, especially durians, are grown in the surrounding areas that fall into this seat thanks to their proximity to the Segamat and Muar rivers and their tributaries. This area extends southwest toward Jementah and also accounts for that town's high pomelo yield.
Together with the UTAR campus further east this central slice of the Segamat District forms a seat that PKR's Natrah Ismail painted red in 2018 by a slim margin. As Natrah is not running again PKR election committee chief Zaliha Mustafa will defend for the party against UMNO former divisional youth chief Md Salleheen Mohamad, PPBM divisional chief Uzzair Ismail, Mohd Saiful Faizul Abd Halim of PUTRA, and Johor Bahru doctor Mohd Zohar Ahmad, WARISAN's only candidate in Johor. BN won big here in the March state elections; the numbers are telling of curtains for PKR. BN gain from PH

P142 Labis: Rubber estates and rice paddies and Emergency-era corraling of suspected communists turned Labis town into a remarkably multiethnic one. Swathes of all three ethnic groups plus the Orang Asli remain scattered in the rural areas to the north and east, where the palm oil plantations march right up to the forested edges of the Endau-Rompin national park.
Labis was held by MCA president and funny sex tape man Chua Soi Lek before being passed down to his son, MCA vice-president Chua Tee Yong (and they say nepotism is a DAP thing!), who lost in 2018 to DAP's Pang Hok Liong and his long roots in the area. The junior Chua is back to reclaim his seat with GERAKAN solicitor Alvin Chang also on the ballot. It should be noted that PH collapsed spectacularly here in March and seems yet to recover; Pang will go down swinging but still probably go down. BN gain from PH

P143 Pagoh: A large slice of farmland and military training camps, vulnerable like all the land around it to severe flooding, reaches down into the Muar urban area as far as the birthplace of Yasmin Ahmad. Yasmin's impact on the Malaysian art scene cannot be overstated and the area she came from is finally, haltingly coming along as developers continue to flood the region.
That artistic culture was heavily antithetical to the local UMNO organization of long history, not least then-UMNO bigwig Muhyiddin Yassin, but since then he has also reinvented himself several times in a trajectory that most of you will be familiar with. His stint as prime minister and leadership of PPBM have not insulated Abah from electoral danger at home, and the eight-term incumbent is in danger of being carried away by the UMNO flood here as ex-Muar MP Razali Ibrahim takes him on, with neophyte geophysicist Iskandar Shah Abdul Rahman carrying the PKR banner. UMNO has made much of a claimed study that shows Muhyiddin losing, but his roots in the area also cannot be overstated and if any PPBM big name survives he'll be there. PN hold

P144 Ledang: The Muar River's meandering as it approaches the Straits (having significantly changed course at least once) is of a piece with the Ledang Mountain and the clouds of mythology that have swirled around it. Visitors entering the state from the Melaka side get excellent views of both in a seat of light industry and heavy riverside agriculture between the mountain and the sea.
Politically the seat also changed course significantly in 2018 when PKR's Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh got a thumping majority. The UMNO incumbent he defeated, Hamim Samuri, has returned hoping the river will change its course back, and given the wild swings that UMNO pulled out of this area in March that seems entirely plausible. PPBM educator Zaidi Abd Majid and a PEJUANG man and two independents could play the function of spoiler again, and while the PKR state chairman should keep it close it's an awfully large hole for his party to climb out of. BN gain from PH

P145 Bakri: One of the longest straight roads in Malaysia, and the record holder at the time, was built in the 19th century – a sign to come of the barely impeded progress the Japanese made down through the Peninsula in 1941-42. The road sweeping out from the Sultan Ismail Bridge in Muar through Bakri town and points east now passes fields and ecotourism farms and small but growing technical businesses in a seat following its journey east.
DAP's Yeo Bee Yin can call a neighboring corner of Johor home, and served her constituency well during this term, but is going back to the original launchpad of her political career in the Damansara-Puchong area up north. Defending a medium-strong DAP seat is Kluang-area assemblyman Tan Hong Pin, who should still come out the beneficiary of this straight flat road to Parliament against former MCA deputy youth chief Lee Ching Yong and PPBM solicitor Chelvarajan Suppiah and the standard-issue independent. PH hold

P146 Muar: The flat land around the mouth of the Muar River has always invited boundless possibilities to those who came upon it and facilitated a long history of interest in the region; and the waves originating from the coastal seat of Muar and its town, from indigenous performance art to Sultanate-era peppers to railways to Muar noodles to bicycles to municipal cleanliness to historians to otak-otak to furniture to members of the Australian Labor Party, have put it on the map many times over.
MUDA leader Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman has been hit with most every trick in BN's book. One other famous export of the region has been UMNO leaders and the party badly wants that back; they hope their divisional youth chief Helmy Abdul Latiff will be able to cut the youth movement party (another product of Muar) off at its head. PAS state deputy chairman Abdulah Husin is the third man and last candidate. I don't know. This seat is exactly the kind where PH should recover well from their March drubbing and Syed Saddiq's independence and energy has made him into another pride of Muar locally. But I still have a creeping feeling that this might shock us on election night. PH (MUDA) hold

P147 Parit Sulong: Bends in the North-South Expressway signal the approach of a locally and historically notorious hill. During the Japanese advance the hill made this rectangular package of land a key fallback point and the eventual site of the Parit Sulong Massacre after a battle for control of the eponymous bridge. Otherwise unexceptional with former bauxite mines and current small agriculture holdings, the town does well and does a service out of continuing to educate us about it.
In that charitable spirit it is perhaps best said that three-term UMNO incumbent Noraini Ahmad does what she can as minister of higher education to carry her seat's educational flame forward. I do however know rather a lot of college students and administrators who will vehemently tell you otherwise. Not that it matters a great deal for her against token PAS and AMANAH challengers, as the area has never deviated from UMNO and isn't about to start now. BN hold

P148 Ayer Hitam: Chinese workers came in droves to the colonial-era plantations that opened up in central Johor under the Sultan's authority. The two towns of Yong Peng and Ayer Hitam now house many of their descendants and distinctive highwayside industries from snack foods to pottery, with Fuzhou biscuits lying at the center of that particular Venn diagram. I kid, Fuzhou biscuits are very good.
Johor DAP appears to have internalized the lesson that transport minister and MCA president Wee Ka Siong's 300-vote margin last round can be cut into by running a Malay candidate to chase the Malay vote, which is why they have nominated state party vice-chair Sheikh Umar Bagharib Ali to do battle with Wee and former state government special officer Muhammad Syafiq Abdul Aziz of PPBM. Word on the ground is that it isn't working – Wee, the only MCA member to survive 2018, is just too well-known and too entrenched. He can feel free to continue overseeing train disruptions when he returns to Parliament after the election. BN hold

P149 Sri Gading: Elephants were hunted here long ago, but the indisputably biggest beast in this area was Tun Hussein Onn who heads a long lineage of Johor UMNO luminaries and whose name still graces a university in the seat he held as prime minister. In an area otherwise known for textiles and heavy industry and heavy textile industry it's a big catch.
Incumbent Shahruddin Md Salleh followed that other big beast, Hussein Onn's successor, into PEJUANG after a bit of dithering and is now going to Pahang on boss's orders. He leaves PEJUANG information chief Mahdzir Ibrahim the unenviable task of defending against UMNO division deputy Mohd Lasim Burhan, former state opposition leader Aminolhuda Hassan of AMANAH, and PAS division recruitment head Zanariyah Abdul Hamid. PEJUANG looks likely to be overrun here. BN gain from GTA

P150 Batu Pahat: A small settlement in west-central Johor was handpicked by the Sultan for development two centuries ago and has carried that trajectory forward to the present day seemingly with very little effort, expanding out to become the state's second-largest urban area with a large agglomeration of industrial parks and textiles and food and fields and rubber plantations to match.
In a seat that takes in the town's core plus a lightly populated stretch of coast, Mohd Rashid Hasnon must be rueing that growth that turned it into a stronghold for the party from which he defected to PPBM. He faces top PKR strategist Onn Abu Bakar looking to reclaim a safe party seat, UMNO's Ishak Siraj, and two small fry from PEJUANG and PRM. City center seats are perhaps too much for PPBM to defend – ask Rina Harun – but PKR is parachuting yet another candidate in to discontent from the grassroots and that may yet bite them badly. PH gain from PN

P151 Simpang Renggam: The highways may give and the highways may take away. Simpang Renggam as a seat through whose western portion they run is a scattered collection of connecting roads and towns with less pottery than Ayer Hitam, less palm oil (but more corpos!) than Segamat, less living history than Muar or Parit Sulong, and less to look forward to than nearly any other Johor highway community.
It's a difficult place for any opposition MP to hold down and the zigzag that former education minister Maszlee Malik has taken from PPBM to PEJUANG to PKR hasn't helped. Nor has the antipathy toward him in his seat's rural reaches that former chief minister Hasni Mohammad of UMNO is gleefully egging on. PPBM's Mohd Fazrul Kamat and PUTRA's Kamal Kusmin seem unlikely to affect a heavy defeat for Maszlee. BN gain from PH

P152 Kluang: Take a centrally located hilly area with lots of room for expansion, add a long history of rubber and excellent transport links, and stick a river through it. That should give you a nice idea of Kluang town, a place basically emblematized by Kluang Rail Coffee, the oldest railway cafe in Malaysia: long history and rainbow of industry which passersby enter and leave rather quickly and escapees seldom return to.
DAP's one-term incumbent Wong Shu Qi has a reasonably safe seat from which she can continue to tend to the locals; MCA lawyer, former senator, and think-tank man Gan Ping Sieu is campaigning hard to become the MP for TikTok and will have to tend to his own locals there. PPBM and independent nonentities round out a snoozer of a ballot. PH hold

P153 Sembrong: There is very little, and I mean little, to recommend from this corner of Johor; the Sembrong River after which it is named almost comically deliberately avoids Kluang and its most notable point is where it empties into the Endau river on the Pahang border. Aside from this the seat is basically all palm oil and rubber and untouched forest (for now).
The river's course mirrors UMNO six-term incumbent and keris man, vape man, littoral combat ship man etc. Hishammuddin Hussein's jump to this seat in 2004 but he has had a far more colorful career by far. This is genuinely a seat that seems impossible for UMNO to lose and that is exactly what he will not do next week when PKR Parit Sulong division chief Hasni Abas and PPBM's Faizal Tahir lookalike Joe Aziz Ismail get sent into the electoral jungle. BN hold