Malaysia's General Elections 2018: Understanding the Rural Vote

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the last Malaysian general election, it was said that a Chinese tsunami swung the popular vote in favour of the opposition. This year, in the 14th General Elections (GE14), the group that will make the biggest difference are the rural Malay voters. For the first time ever, there seems to be a possibility that the rural Malay voter in Peninsular Malaysia might move away from UMNO. While urban centres in West Malaysia are already largely in support of the opposition, it is a “rural Malay tsunami” that is needed to break the ruling party's hold on government.

According to Politweet, voter categories can be divided according to the following criteria:

• Rural — villages (kampungs), small towns, farmland distributed within a parliamentary or state seat. Rural seats tend to be physically large but have a low population.

• Semi-urban — larger towns or numerous small towns; may include villages as well.

• Urban — cities where a majority of the seat area is covered by some form of urban development.

Tindak Malaysia4 has shown that most rural seats are over-represented, meaning that only a few votes (in the thousands), carry the power to elect a representative. On the other hand, an urban seat can have tens of thousands of votes counting towards the election of a single representative. This means that the weight of a rural vote is far heavier and more influential than that of an urban vote.

Figure 1 illustrates the spread of rural, urban and semi-urban votes and the winning party during the 13th General Elections. The map clearly demonstrates how many of the large rural seats were won by the ruling party.

The year 2018 could be the first year that Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) competes in the general elections, if it is allowed to contest.5 It would be a historic entry. Helmed by Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's longest serving former Prime Minister and now ex-UMNO member, this avowedly Malay nationalist party could be the only opportunity for the Pakatan Harapan (PH) opposition coalition to wrest rural Malay votes from the current government.