KUALA LUMPUR: DAP boosted its voter support by campaigning with Umno in the six state elections last year, said former DAP Serdang member of parliament Ong Kian Ming.
Ong, in his paper titled "Scrutinising the DAP's success in the 2023 Malaysian state elections", said the party gained an average of five per cent increase in the level of support from 2022 to last year with eight and two per cent increases respectively in Malay and Chinese support.
It was published on the website of Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute where Ong is a senior visiting fellow.
The former international trade and industry deputy minister said DAP won 46 out of 47 state seats it contested, losing only the Derga state seat, a 61 per cent Malay majority state seat in Kedah, to Perikatan Nasional's Bersatu candidate.
Following the formation of the unity government in December 2022, two of its component coalitions, Pakatan Harapan and Barisan Nasional jointly campaigned during the state elections held in August last year.
Ong said a key question arising from this cooperation between PH and BN's lead party, Umno, was the extent to which it would strengthen the appeal of both coalitions, especially among Malay voters.
The six state elections, he added, were important politically as it was the first serious electoral test for the unity government where the former bitter political rivals would have to campaign together for the first time.
He said, using granular polling stations and polling stream data for 47 seats contested by PH's DAP, the paper explored the effect of the relationship on voter support.
"DAP would probably still have won at least 41 of these state seats without transferring BN/Umno votes.
"But working with Umno allowed DAP to win by comfortable margins some of what would usually be marginal seats for the party.
"In general, DAP gained the largest transfer of Malay votes from older voters who show stronger allegiance to BN.
"These findings show that Umno's grassroots outreach is still somewhat effective among older voters but much less so among younger voters," he said in the report.
Ong said the increase in support for DAP was highest in Negri Sembilan at 6.7 per cent, followed by Selangor at 5.2 per cent, Penang at 4.3 per cent and Kedah at 1.4 per cent.
He said the average support for PN in these DAP contested seats increased from 13.1 per cent in the 2022 General Election to 19.2 per cent in the 2023 state elections.
"Clearly, more of the Malay votes that previously supported BN went to PN than to PH.
"The calculations in this article show that four out of five Malay voters who previously supported BN in these seats voted for PN in the 2023 state elections.
"Going forward, DAP's stranglehold over these seats may well become weaker, due to demographic changes, and if turnout and support for PH and DAP should decrease among non-Malay voters," he said.
Ong said the loss of support in Derga can be explained by the "Sanusi" swing of Malay support in favour of PN's Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Muhammad Sanusi Md Noor of Pas in the lead up to the 2023 state elections.
"(It was) when his name was riding high at the state and national levels. His appearance on the popular podcast/YouTube channel hosted by Khairy Jamaluddin, the former health minister, and Shahril Hamdan, the former economic adviser to then prime minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob garnered more than one million views on the YouTube channel and probably many ore through viral clips, Tik Tok and other social media platforms.
"Even with the cooperation of Umno, DAP was not able to garner significant Malay support, losing it by 14 per cent to PN.
"The swing in support of PN and Sanusi was too big and PN won this seat with 56.8 per cent while DAP candidate Tan Kok Yew managed to win only 42.
