Malaysia 2022 General Election Nov 19th

[jaichind]

Peninsular Malaysia results (164 out of 165)
                  
PH-MUDA      71
   DAP             33
   PHK             29
   AMANAH        8
   MUDA            1

PN               70            
   PAS             43 !!!
   PPBM           27 !!!

BN              23
   UMNO         20 !!!
   MCA             2
   MIC              1

Last seat almost certain now to go to PPBM


2018 -> 2022

UMNO     46->20
MCA         1->2
MIC          2->1

DAP         33->33
PKR         41->29
AMANAH  11->8

PPBM       13->27 (will be 28)
PAS         18->43

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Have PN simply captured the old BN machine, or is it a truly ideological shift? Like, are PAS moderating on religious issues or what?

PAS hasn't moderated at all, they just (largely) successfully hid behind PPBM and the Muhyiddin government's image of "nice" "clean" ""stable"" government, and leveraged the public discontent with UMNO corruption and arrogance in calling an election at a time like this

True, but I guess the issue is, is PN simply just going to usurp the old position held by BN. After all, umno itself iirc became increasingly willing to pander to Islamists in the last few decades of its gov - is PN going to essentially become a neo-UMNO just with a formal Islamist wing?

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

I think it is totally understandable.  The Chinese population in Malaysia controls a very large part of the private economy.   If the Chinese also have access to political power this would place them in a very powerful position over the Malay majority.  The entire UMNO-MCA arrangement with BN was done exactly to ensure that the Chinese population has very little political power and the Malay majority agree not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This arrangement is now breaking down with the decline of BN.

i understand you, but there is something unsettlingly ... Feudal about that arrangement? I don't see how that in the long run helps the chinese position in Malaysian society, nor address Malay grievances/resentments.


Also why did warisan do so badly?

[Joseph Cao]

PN               69             
   PAS             42

I am moments away from combustion as a result of conflicting pain at the results and intense desire to make the obligatory jokes.

Gerakan won any seats

Ha ha ha ha ha. But no, there are no minority PN MPs outside of Sabah/Sarawak that I know of, and I trawled through basically every candidate in the past two weeks.

[jaichind]

Good news for UMNO: No PN-led government can be formed without their MPs
Bad news for UMNO: Their bargaining position is very weak so it is not clear how much access to resources they will have in this new government and once a PN-led government is in place the first thing PPBM is going to do is to lure UMNO MPs to defect to PPBM

[Joseph Cao]

Have PN simply captured the old BN machine, or is it a truly ideological shift? Like, are PAS moderating on religious issues or what?

PAS hasn't moderated at all, they just (largely) successfully hid behind PPBM and the Muhyiddin government's image of "nice" "clean" ""stable"" government, and leveraged the public discontent with UMNO corruption and arrogance in calling an election at a time like this

True, but I guess the issue is, is PN simply just going to usurp the old position held by BN. After all, umno itself iirc became increasingly willing to pander to Islamists in the last few decades of its gov - is PN going to essentially become a neo-UMNO just with a formal Islamist wing?

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

I think it is totally understandable.  The Chinese population in Malaysia controls a very large part of the private economy.   If the Chinese also have access to political power this would place them in a very powerful position over the Malay majority.  The entire UMNO-MCA arrangement with BN was done exactly to ensure that the Chinese population has very little political power and the Malay majority agree not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This arrangement is now breaking down with the decline of BN.

i understand you, but there is something unsettlingly ... Feudal about that arrangement? I don't see how that in the long run helps the chinese position in Malaysian society, nor address Malay grievances/resentments.


Also why did warisan do so badly?

This is an even more open result than GE14 really, because there's no real clue what PN will do with its windfall and the new MPs in places like western Perak probably simply vote the party line which could easily devolve into the old UMNO way of doing things. The question is how UMNO reacts to that, so the push and pull could last as long as UMNO is institutionally capable of doing so.

Feudalism has always been a thread of Malaysian political history, I'm not sure why it should stop now. The country's had sixty-five years of successive Malay-led administrations sweeping every problem that results from such arrangements and the still-existing problems under the rug, and I'm also not sure why that should stop now given this result.

I did have WARISAN doing worse than their baseline simply because they struck gold in 2018. But doing this badly with warlords like Darrell Leiking going down would be an indication that the state's dissatisfaction with Shafie from 2020 onwards is still running strong.

[Joseph Cao]

Good news for UMNO: No PN-led government can be formed without their MPs
Bad news for UMNO: Their bargaining position is very weak so it is not clear how much access to resources they will have in this new government and once a PN-led government is in place the first thing PPBM is going to do is to lure UMNO MPs to defect to PPBM

If that wasn't already illegal I'd agree with you.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

What's the plan for PH and specifically PKR ? I don't realy see what distinguishes DAP and PKR beyond Anwar.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

Well DAP is an offshoot of the PAP, and some Malays views Singapore as a (negative example) of what happen to Malaysia if the were in power.

[jaichind]

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

I think it is totally understandable.  The Chinese population in Malaysia controls a very large part of the private economy.   If the Chinese also have access to political power this would place them in a very powerful position over the Malay majority.  The entire UMNO-MCA arrangement with BN was done exactly to ensure that the Chinese population has very little political power and the Malay majority agree not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This arrangement is now breaking down with the decline of BN.

i understand you, but there is something unsettlingly ... Feudal about that arrangement? I don't see how that in the long run helps the chinese position in Malaysian society, nor address Malay grievances/resentments.


Also why did warisan do so badly?

Tribalism was and will continue to be part of human nature.  It is difficult for a society where several large tribes with different skills co-habit without breaking out into conflict over the perception of "unfairness."  So this type of arrangement seems the only way to avoid all-out conflict and take into account the comparative advantages of the different tribes.  The Chinese in Malaysia is making a mistake by voting for DAP as opposed to MCA (starting in 2008) and breaking this arrangement along the way. 

As for WARISAN, I think they did badly for the same reason BN did badly in Peninsular Malaysia.  The election became one where one voted for PM. In such a case the anti-BN-PN vote consolidated around PH since at least PH has a PM face.  WARISAN had nothing and had no vision of how it was going to use its MP to get something for Sabah.  WARISAN should have allied with PH and could have saved a couple of seats.

[Oryxslayer]

Have PN simply captured the old BN machine, or is it a truly ideological shift? Like, are PAS moderating on religious issues or what?

PAS hasn't moderated at all, they just (largely) successfully hid behind PPBM and the Muhyiddin government's image of "nice" "clean" ""stable"" government, and leveraged the public discontent with UMNO corruption and arrogance in calling an election at a time like this

True, but I guess the issue is, is PN simply just going to usurp the old position held by BN. After all, umno itself iirc became increasingly willing to pander to Islamists in the last few decades of its gov - is PN going to essentially become a neo-UMNO just with a formal Islamist wing?

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

I think it is totally understandable.  The Chinese population in Malaysia controls a very large part of the private economy.   If the Chinese also have access to political power this would place them in a very powerful position over the Malay majority.  The entire UMNO-MCA arrangement with BN was done exactly to ensure that the Chinese population has very little political power and the Malay majority agree not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.  This arrangement is now breaking down with the decline of BN.

i understand you, but there is something unsettlingly ... Feudal about that arrangement? I don't see how that in the long run helps the chinese position in Malaysian society, nor address Malay grievances/resentments.


Also why did warisan do so badly?

The legal (from some perspectives justified) affirmative action/discrimination in favor of the Malay majority because the other groups are better positioned in the economic and non-political arenas is one of the reasons why the non-Malay vote slowly and then dramatically fled the UMNO alliance. It gets arguably to how one no matter where perceives the ideal of equality, which depends on a multitude of factors influencing ones own identity. Equality could mean a level and fair playing field. Or it could mean opportunity for all. Or representation for all. One could pursue these ideals towards a similar vision of prosperity but result in diverging views on government policy because of where injustice is perceived.

I will note the justification for the electoral malapportionment is said affirmative action. Especially in regards to Sarawak.

[jaichind]

Sabah/Labaun results (breaking them down by BN and PN as the best way to get the starting point for government formation talks)

BN               7
  UMNO           6
  PBRS            1

PN               8
 PPBM             6
 PBS               1
 STAR             1

PH               5
 DAP              2
 UPKO            2 !! (amazing how they pulled this off)
 PKR              1

WARISAN     3

KDM             1
PPBM rebel    2
  
The KDM winner has a PPBM background.  The 2 PPBM rebels ran with KDM support.  One of them actually became KDM but choose to run as an independent.  

UPKO's outperforming plus the KDM-backed candidates (1 KDM and the 2 PPBM rebels) seems to indicate that the  Kadazandusun vote is dealigning from the major blocs and voting for  Kadazandusun parties/outfits.
 
Given that the KDM and 2 PPBM rebels all have PPBM background I assume it is easy for them to jump onboard the likely PN-led government.

[jaichind]

All in all in Sabah the PN bloc walked away with more MPs than one would expect while BN and PH-WARISAN walked away with somewhat less than expected and certainly hoped.   This aligns well with the PN overperformance in Peninsular Malaysia.

[Joseph Cao]

What's the plan for PH and specifically PKR ? I don't realy see what distinguishes DAP and PKR beyond Anwar.

This is only true within the confines of Kuala Lumpur and environs.

PKR has a very specific association with Anwar and reformasi that is the primary reason why many of their current seats were won in 2008, why some of those same seats were just lost this election, and why Nurul Izzah's loss is going to prompt PKR to examine itself much closer than almost any other result would have.

DAP is and always has been associated with the Chinese and Indians. Their efforts to expand beyond that have not been successful outside of one or two seats, in part because of the counterprogramming by BN and PN. As long as this fearmongering wins votes, and it clearly did for PN today, it will continue to not be successful.

So do people just hate DAP out of pure anti-chinese racism?

Well DAP is an offshoot of the PAP, and some Malays views Singapore as a (negative example) of what happen to Malaysia if the were in power.

I know Malaysians online joke a lot about hating Singapore but vanishingly few Malay voters are actually motivated in any way by "Singapore is better/worse/more Chinese than us" which often doesn't even fall within their horizon. Don't feel like getting too deep into the question of whether people are racist for hating DAP but I have to say that this especially misses the mark.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

SNIP

That makes a lot of sense tbh, Singaporeans probably spend more time talking about Malasiya than vice-versa. I do find the ideological drif of the DAP and the PAP pretty interesting, direct ties were obviously cut after independence and all unofficial ones were burned ones Devin Nair resigned but the parties do still retain some similarities.

I've noticed DAP tends to attract more genuine ideologues,(the only PAP MP I would classify as an ideologue be Tharman) and has obviously stayed closer to the ancestral socialist rhetoric transitioning to a more center-left rethoric rather than the PAP's embrace of generic singaporean nationalism. Yet it's voter base does tend to be more well-to-do than average, and in practice when governing Penang it seems to have adopted a fairly similar pro-free market centrist governing style.

I've noticed some singaporean are taking glee in how Mahathir's downfall but other than that reactions have been rather muted. Kinda Ironic how Najib was probably the prime minister we got along best with.

[jaichind]

Peninsular Malaysia vote share

PH-MUDA      39.42%
   DAP             16.02%
   PHK             16.48%
   AMANAH        6.39%
   MUDA            0.54%

PN               34.82%      
   PAS             17.74%
   PPBM           14.99%
   GERAKAN       2.09%

BN               24.46%
   UMNO          17.27%
   MCA              5.17%
   MIC               1.25%
   Minor             0.77%

GTA                0.77%

PH-MUDA vote share looks right.  It is the PN vote share that was massive and came at the expense of BN vote share.  GTA is also lower than I would expect.

[jaichind]

Looking over the results in Peninsular Malaysia seat-by-seat my conclusion is that PH was doomed from the beginning and that there was no way they could have "won" this election.

It seems that BN underperformed across the board regardless of the demographic nature of the district.  This says that negativity toward Ahmad Zahid Hamidi most likely pushed a bunch of BN votes over to PN which had a surge and took a bunch of PH seats.

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         71
PN                 34.82%         70
BN                 24.46%         23

To get a sense of how one can filter this impact out in a way that benefits PH, the best way is to assume that 16% of the PN vote goes to BN.  That would produce

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         69
PN                 29.25%         45
BN                 30.03%         50

Where BN gains a bunch of seats from PN but PH-MUDA loses a few seats to BN which cancels out the gains PH-MUDA makes from PN.  So it seems even if BN and PN have equal vote share giving PH-MUDA an almost 10% vote share lead over both PH-MUDA failed to win a majority of seats in Peninsular Malaysia.  There are just too many heavy Malay seats where PH vote share is below 30% which means it could not win those seats no matter how the BN-PN vote distribution takes.

[Logical]

PH+BN is extremely cursed but also incredibly funny so I'm praying that it happens.

[Novelty]

I'm waiting for Jaichind and Cao to do their post mortems!

I definitely didn't see the PN wave coming for sure.  I guess the "slaughter all non-Muslims" and "PH has a bunch of Jews to Christianise Malaysia" (lolol)  narratives really took hold in the north?

[jaichind]

King: Form a government and name a PM by Nov 21 afternoon

[Logical]

By my crude calculations, Negeri Sembilan PH government would have been reelected had they held the election yesterday. Selangor and Penang are safe PH no matter what so whenever they decide to hold the election matters not.

[jaichind]

There are two 2018 PAS MPs from P19 Tumpat and P35 Kuala Nerus that defected from PAS and ran for BN as pro-BN independents.  Of course, they were crushed.  It is still pretty funny how they jumped on the bandwagon just as it was going off the cliff.
 
 

[jaichind]

Peninsular Malaysia rank (164 out of 165 seats) and average vote share in each rank

                           1                   2               3
PH-MUDA      71/56.67%    32/31.95%  61/13.25%
PN                70/52.60%    54/26.18%  40/20.31%
BN                23/45.34%    78/29.50%  63/17.30%

PN is the most spread out in terms of support where both PH-MUDA and BN have a large number of districts where they are not relevant (below 20%).  The higher vote share for PH-MUDA and BN for second-place finishes is a clear sign of BN->PN and PH-MUDA->PN tactical voting.  PH-MUDA and BN both seeing each other as the main enemy worked very well for PN. 

Sort of reminds me of the French legislative  election early this year where ENS and NUPES saw each other as the main enemy which actually worked to allow RN to get in in a bunch of places.

[jaichind]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Saw this joke on the Malay internet:
Q: Busiest airport in Malaysia today?
A: Kuching

[Logical]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at nearby PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold on because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.