Malaysia State Elections: Penang, Selangor, N9, Kelantan, T'ganu, Kedah 2023 and by-elections 2023

[Oryxslayer]

I believe Kelantan fully finishes it's count:

43 PN: 37 PAS, 6 Bersatu

1 BN: 1 UMNO

1 PH: 1 AMANAH

But https://pru.astroawani.com/  has PH-BN winning 6 seats in Kelantan.  Not sure which site is correct.

I was about to say, they seem to have the vote counts for candidates in a number of seats assigned to the wrong (or right if the other sites are wrong) candidate. They seemingly just fixed it and other errors like in N20 - SUNGAI BAKAP and N05 - SERTING.

[jaichind]

Former Anwar protege and co-founder of PKR and later PKR Menteri Besar of Selangor Azmin Ali who since rebelled against Anwar in 2020 and joined PPBM wins narrowly his seat in an upset.  He switched seats since he knows he could not win his old seat when he won in 2018 as a PKR candidate.  It seems he picked wisely and won.

[jaichind]

Current leads vs my prediction. 

I was way off in Negeri Sembilan but was pretty close everywhere else.  I had a hunch that the FELDA vote might stay with UMNO in Negeri Sembilan but still decided to go with the rural Malay consolidation narrative there and was proved wrong.

https://prn.luminews.my/overall

                                  My prediction
Selangor
PH-BN  37                         36
PN       18                         20

Penang
PH-BN 29                          29
PN       11                         11


Kelantan
PN       43                        45
PH-BN   2                           0


Terengganu 
PN       32                        32
PH-BN   0                          0


Kedah
PN        32                      30
PH-BN    4                        6


Negeri Sembilan
PH-BN   31                     19
PN          5                     17

[Oryxslayer]

Kedah is the next state I believe to fully officially finish:

33 PN: 21 PAS, 11 Bersatu, 1 Gerakan

3 PH: 2 PKR, 1 DAP

[Oryxslayer]

Negeri Sembilan and Terengganu officially confirmed their counts:

Negri Sembilan

17 PH: 11 DAP, 6 PKR, 1 AMANAH

14 BN: 14 UMNO

5 PN: 3 PAS, 1 Bersatu, 1 Gerakan


Terengganu

32 PN: 27 PAS, 5 Bersatu



At least to me, I find it interesting that PN was able to get the clean sweep in Terengganu  but not Kelantan where PAS has has a strong base of support for over a decade now.

[Oryxslayer]

Penang has finished:

27 PH: 19 DAP, 7 PKR, 1 AMANAH

11 PN: 7 PAS, 4 Bersatu

2 BN: 2 UMNO

[Logical]

Appears that PN won several seats in Selangor with <100 majorities. Wonder if that might be overturned in a recount.

[Oryxslayer]

Selangor finishes. Ended up as the closest state and the only one not electing a 2/3s majority, even though overall control seemingly wasn't in danger.

32 PH: 15 DAP, 12 PKR, 5 AMANAH

22 PN: 12 Bersatu, 10 PAS

2 BN: 2 UMNO

[jaichind]

UMNO win ratio. I think this is barely enough for Zahid to maintain control of UMNO. 

Kedah – 0/15
Terengganu – 0/27
Kelantan – 1/31
Selangor – 2/12
Penang – 2/6
Negeri Sembilan – 14/17

[Oryxslayer]

Final tally:

PH 33
DAP 15
PKR 14
Amanah 4

PN 23
Bersatu 12
PAS 11

I was going to say to jaichind, having DAP win 16 seats in the state is pretty bullish on them when they're only contesting 15 seats. Not that a single miscalculation matters much.

This prediction appears to have actually been rather close to the (at least initial) declared results, so lets see how it broke down seat by seat. Unless otherwise stated, Joseph Cao called the winner correctly:

N01 Sungai Air Tawar: Rizam Ismail holds on for BN by 800 votes of <15K. Mohamad Zaidi Selamat's issues must have cost him what should be a easy win. +1 BN, - 1 PN compared to the prediction.

N10 Bukit Melawati: PKR’s Juwairiya Zulkifli loses by 900 votes of ~28.5K. +1 PN, -1 PH.

N15 Taman Templer: Anfaal Saari holds it. The 765 votes won by MUDA here are larger than the gap between PAS and AMANAH. +1 PH, -1 PN.

N23 Dusun Tua: The PH votes ended up mostly transferring to UMNO's Johan Abdul Aziz in this pseudo-3-way area, though again the MUDA vote is larger than the gap between the candidates. +1 BN, -1 PN.

N33 Taman Medan: Ahmad Akhir Pawan Chik of PKR loses this seat by 30 votes of 44.6K cast, the tightest initial result of the election. The Bersatu gain certainly looks out of place surrounding by PH holds. +1 PN, -1 PH.

N38 Paya Jaras: Mohd Khairuddin Othman of now PKR loses by 2K votes of about 53K cast. +1 PN, -1 PH.

N54 Tanjong Sepat: Prominent PKR member Borhan Aman Shah holds off PAS by over 2K votes of 25K cast.  +1 PH, -1 PN.



Also of note is N17 Gombak Setia which PN won by 58 votes over UMNO.

[jaichind]

Penang vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH      59.99%     60.55%
BN      15.19%       5.61%
PN      23.96%     32.96%

The some of anti-PH votes in Chinese and mixed districts that BN won in 2022 went over to PN since BN is not running there

[jaichind]

Selangor vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH      52.81%     51.62%
BN      17.40%       9.23%
PN      27.54%     37.46%

Like Penang, some of the anti-PH votes in Chinese and mixed districts that BN won in 2022 went over to PN since BN is not running there but there are fewer of that seats so the PN swing has more of the old BN Malay vote which powered its seat gain.

[jaichind]

Negeri Sembilan vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH      44.80%     38.62%
BN      32.17%     22.26%
PN      21.96%     37.68%

A good part of the old BN Malay rural vote went over to PN.  BN got a better deal in terms of seat-sharing here relative to PH so the BN swing to PN is most likely larger than 10% and also explains the vote share loss of PH when in fact the old PH vote is most likely intact.

[jaichind]

Kedah  vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH      23.28%     20.01%
BN      19.46%     10.14%
PN      54.96%     68.88%

A large swing toward PN.  Looking at the relative vote shares of PH and BN it seems the old PH vote share is mostly intact but most of the BN rural Malay vote went over to PN.

[jaichind]

Kelantan  vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH        8.80%     10.34%
BN      26.79%     14.73%
PN      63.66%     74.67%

Kelantan turnout fell relative to other states the most.  It seems it was part of the old BN vote that stayed away.  PH got more seats allocated than their strength would justify mostly due to some residual AMANAH strength here (AMANAH is a PAS splinter) as well the existence of a few semi-mixed seats which explains their vote share growth.

[jaichind]

Terengganu vote share 2022 Federal vs 2023 State

            2022        2023
PH        5.49%       2.78%
BN      31.68%     28.70%
PN      62.38%     68.44%

PH got very few seats and the vote share shows.  Standard BN->PN Malay swimg.

[Joseph Cao]

Was too tired this weekend to post much, but since everyone is doing their post-mortems:

Appears that PN won several seats in Selangor with <100 majorities. Wonder if that might be overturned in a recount.

There are always state seats with tiny majorities every election, they won't get overturned unless the losing candidate sues and there is provable cause of something untoward.

This prediction appears to have actually been rather close to the (at least initial) declared results, so lets see how it broke down seat by seat. Unless otherwise stated, Joseph Cao called the winner correctly:

Oh man, I'm hurt. /j

N01 Sungai Air Tawar: Rizam Ismail holds on for BN by 800 votes of <15K. Mohamad Zaidi Selamat's issues must have cost him what should be a easy win. +1 BN, - 1 PN compared to the prediction.

To add on, I think I also mentioned Sungai Air Tawar was by far the smallest constituency in Selangor by voting population. Easier to get an outlier result that way.

N10 Bukit Melawati: PKR’s Juwairiya Zulkifli loses by 900 votes of ~28.5K. +1 PN, -1 PH.

This wasn’t Juwairiya, it was her replacement Thiban Subbramaniam.

There was a bloodbath in Kuala Selangor that will need to be addressed. Personally I doubt Ju would have lost here if she had stayed in the seat, and she did only get swapped out at the last minute so it’s not totally clear how long Thiban had been on the ground before nomination day.

N15 Taman Templer: Anfaal Saari holds it. The 765 votes won by MUDA here are larger than the gap between PAS and AMANAH. +1 PH, -1 PN.

PH only won a plurality of the vote in Taman Templer during GE15 and I flagged it even before nomination day as a potential danger point. Amanah hung on with less than 500 votes with their last-minute reassignment of Anfaal here. Hard to tell what might have happened with another candidate. Which I am quite eager to find out about, incidentally, Sany had telegraphed very early on that he would retire so there must have been some more local names in the nomination shortlist.

N23 Dusun Tua: The PH votes ended up mostly transferring to UMNO's Johan Abdul Aziz in this pseudo-3-way area, though again the MUDA vote is larger than the gap between the candidates. +1 BN, -1 PN.

Ini semua salah DAP.

N33 Taman Medan: Ahmad Akhir Pawan Chik of PKR loses this seat by 30 votes of 44.6K cast, the tightest initial result of the election. The Bersatu gain certainly looks out of place surrounding by PH holds. +1 PN, -1 PH.

Oh, did I mention the 2018 redelineation made this seat like 20% more Malay? Because that was a thing that happened. The Election Commission and its consequences et cetera.

N38 Paya Jaras: Mohd Khairuddin Othman of now PKR loses by 2K votes of about 53K cast. +1 PN, -1 PH.

N54 Tanjong Sepat: Prominent PKR member Borhan Aman Shah holds off PAS by over 2K votes of 25K cast.  +1 PH, -1 PN.

In my private notes I had a bucket of genuinely difficult seats to call even after accounting for the expected wave in PN-won areas. Paya Jaras and Tanjong Sepat were two of the last ones that I pushed to one side or the other and I essentially split the difference with them; in the event PN largely held serve in southern Selangor compared to 2022.

Breaking down the nine seats in that bucket further:

• Kuala Kubu Baharu and Sungai Pelek, gray DAP areas, which I called correctly
• Taman Templer (called wrongly, by PH’s narrowest margin)
• Gombak Setia and Hulu Kelang (correctly guessed they would swing together although again I did not see how narrow the Gombak Setia margin would be)
• Dusun Tua and Semenyih (the most indefensible choice in hindsight but I was honestly pretty worried about the durability of non-Malay turnout)
• Paya Jaras and Tanjong Sepat, where I split the difference (and called both wrongly)

Sungai Air Tawar and Taman Medan were the "firm" seats that I called wrongly and given the tiny margins involved in both I'm not too hung up about getting them wrong.

Also of note is N17 Gombak Setia which PN won by 58 votes over UMNO.

The creepy facial hair twins (Hilman and Afif) won by a collective margin of 88 votes. Worst outcome, honestly.

[jaichind]

The choice for MB of Negeri Sembilan shows that from a game theory point of view, BN is now "locked" into its alliance with PH.

Back in 2022, the state election result for Perak was

PN  26
PH  24
BN   9

A BN-PH government was formed with a UMNO MB since BN held the balance of power and could have gone either way.  PH which saw PN as its main enemy going forward had to give up the MB spot to secure an alliance with BN.

In 2023 the Negeri Sembilan state election produced

PH  17
BN  14
PN    5

In theory, BN could have roped in PN for a majority and likely captured the MB spot for itself.  But after days of talks, BN yield to PH and supported a PKR MB.  This time PH refused to back down because it knew that BN was locked into a PH-BN alliance at the national level and the threat of a PN-PN government is zero.

The change in negotiation dynamics reveals the shift in the negotiation position of BN from last year.

[Oryxslayer]

The choice for MB of Negeri Sembilan shows that from a game theory point of view, BN is now "locked" into its alliance with PH.

Back in 2022, the state election result for Perak was

PN  26
PH  24
BN   9

A BN-PH government was formed with a UMNO MB since BN held the balance of power and could have gone either way.  PH which saw PN as its main enemy going forward had to give up the MB spot to secure an alliance with BN.

In 2023 the Negeri Sembilan state election produced

PH  17
BN  14
PN    5

In theory, BN could have roped in PN for a majority and likely captured the MB spot for itself.  But after days of talks, BN yield to PH and supported a PKR MB.  This time PH refused to back down because it knew that BN was locked into a PH-BN alliance at the national level and the threat of a PN-PN government is zero.

The change in negotiation dynamics reveals the shift in the negotiation position of BN from last year.

This also gets into the political strategy discussion going forward of what exactly is BN/UMNO's future place when there's a stronger favored party among Malay voters. Arguably the party's biggest asset is it's institutional heritage, but Malaysia is a country with a lot a of young people. With 14% growth rate last decade, it won't be too long before the dominant legacy is on of the more recent corruption. Their former allies in Borneo found out they could run on their own and do fine, so everything below will concern the peninsula only.

So do they shift sides and go with the new guys? UMNO's voters are also PN/PAS's voters. The only winnable seats would be the ones delegated in candidate negotiations. The party would live on, but in effective retirement as a satellite of the new hegemon. Never mind the fact that they don't exactly align perfectly with PASs political Islamism.

Do they stay with PH? UMNO is certainly not competing for the same voter pools as the founding PH parties, so they would certainly be awarded a considerable amount of seats to contest. But while the PH vote may transfer, as seen this weekend, that usually isn't many votes for them in their target seats. This will mean feasting during good times, like in Negeri Sembilan, or famine during bad ones. Never mind the fact that they don't exactly align traditionally with PH and especially DAP's goals of limiting/ending affirmative action.

Do they try and stay a third pillar? Obviously if PN collapses then UMNO will try to swoop in, but lets assume that doesn't happen for now. BN therefore would have to find their own distinct niche and maintain a electoral base, because they no longer have an aura of invincibility and power. Far more likely they just get squeezed by Duverger's FPTP trends.

The only thing that might significantly push them in one direction might actually be electoral reform. A significant expansion of peninsula seats, say from 165 to 200, (with probably a additional number of new ones going to Borneo tbh) would mean that more states than Selangor would have to redraw their lines. PH-BN could certainly use this to create seats for BN under the current electoral arrangement: say unpack certain DAP seats in ways that create majority-Malay seats with enough Chinese for PN to have difficulty winning, or gerrymander together BN voting areas from 2022 and last weekend.

[jaichind]

I think UMNO's path forward is the following:  PH has pretty much delegated the managing of rural Malays to UMNO in the unity government.  UMNO has 4 years to use the power of the state to try to turn as many as possible rural Malay voters back to UMNO and away from PN.  If UMNO is successful then 2027 will be a 3-way battle.  If not the UMNO will become PH's Malay version of MCA.  Namely in the 2008-2018 period, MCA cannot win in Chinese districts but was given mixed districts by UMNO to run in where the Malay vote could power MCA candidates to victory.  Likewise in such a scenario UNMO will run in rural Malay seats and lose to PN but be given some mixed seats by PH where the Chinese-Indian vote can power UMNO to victory in some cases.  In such a case I suspect MCA and even MIC might then defect to PN.

[Joseph Cao]

Every leader has been sworn in except for Selangor's which is expected to happen on Monday. The Sultan was abroad for surgery during the post-election period which gave plenty of time for rumors to start spreading that Amirudin would be dropped as candidate, but the choice is entirely the Sultan's prerogative and there's no reason for him to change leaders after Amirudin defended him strongly during that Sanusi fiasco.

Though for what it is worth, if the unthinkable does happen, the other two names submitted to the palace are Borhan Aman Shah of Tanjong Sepat (second term) and Fahmi Ngah of Seri Setia (newly elected).

In recount news, PH have filed a report contesting the result in Sungai Kandis (167-vote majority for Bersatu, 1341 votes for MUDA) on grounds of around 1800 missing ballots unaccounted for in the official tally.

[jaichind]

I am too lazy to do a vote share regression by community but it seems someone else did. 


https://twitter.com/TheRealBobss/status/1691327196298964992

Racial polarization continues as PH-BN wins 99% of the Chinese vote.  It seems what is left of the old MCA vote went over to PH to beat back PN.

As for the Malay vote in Negeri Sembilan, the FELDA vote helped PH-BN retain some significant Malay vote but outside of that, there has been a further shift of the Malay vote toward PN relative to 2022 results.

I did my initial regression for Peninsular Malaysia

The ethnic polarization was a bit greater than I expected it with PH not losing much Chinese or Indian support but losing a bunch of Malay voters relative to 2018

Malays (60.6% of voters)
BN    33
PH    10
PN     56

Chinese (27.7% of voters)
BN     6
PH    93
PN      2

Indians (8.9% of voters)
BN    17
PH    82
PN      1

Others (2.9% of voters) - This is a combination of Aborigines and those from Borneo
BN    62
PH    15
PN    24

BN most likely won a massive majority of the Aborigines vote and three bloc split the Borneo vote.

[Joseph Cao]

I call shenanigans on the non-Malay vote being 99% for PH+BN, that includes the Indian vote where there's been a clear swing away from the two coalitions. Even excluding Terengganu and Kelantan that figure is way too high.

[jaichind]

I call shenanigans on the non-Malay vote being 99% for PH+BN, that includes the Indian vote where there's been a clear swing away from the two coalitions. Even excluding Terengganu and Kelantan that figure is way too high.

Well, my very rough poor man regression had PN getting 1% of the Indian vote and 2% of the Chinese vote in 2022.  It is not absurd that it is around 1% for both this time around.  It does imply that all Indian and Chinese voters for BN went over to PH-BN which seems like a stretch but not unbelievable. 

One way to think about it is that  Kelantan and Terengganu are over 96% Malay and PN won 75% and 68% of the vote respectively which would put their vote share with Malays around perhaps 76% and 70% respectively in those two states.  That is fairly consistent with the PN share of the Malay vote in Kedah Penang and Selangor.  So if those numbers match and I have to assume that the people that did this regression do need to make sure that the headline numbers match then we have to conclude that their estimate of the Chinese and Indian vote breakdown are likely accurate or at least consistent with  Kelantan and Terengganu results.

[Joseph Cao]

Considering the electoral schedule ahead of us it might be good to turn this into a more general Malaysian special elections thread.