This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 27, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Almost 8% of the Malay votes for Barisan Nasional (BN) may swing to the opposition in the general election on May 9, the latest survey by opinion pollster Merdeka Centre shows.

The survey indicates that Malay sentiment against the ruling coalition is likely to cause a 7.9% swing in the upcoming 14th general election (GE14), Merdeka Centre programme director Ibrahim Suffian said at a seminar on the election outlook last night.

“Yes [there will be a Malay tsunami], but diffused across state and contesting parties. Each state has its own unique dynamic reflective of local political history, contemporary condition and developments, and relative strength of the local political actor,” he said.

Presenting Merdeka Centre’s survey results, Ibrahim said BN will see the biggest drop of support in Johor, falling 20.9 percentage points (ppts) to 60.9% of Malay votes in GE14, compared with 81.8% in GE13.

This is followed by Selangor, falling 17.2 ppts to 41.3%, from 58.5% in GE13.

In Perak, Ibrahim said, Malay support for BN is likely to fall 8.9 ppts to 54.4%, from 62.9% in GE13.

For Kedah, where former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is contesting, Ibrahim said Malay support for BN will fall by just 1.1 ppts to 53.4%.

For Kelantan, however, the survey finds that Malay support for BN has increased by 8.4 ppts to 54%, from 45.6% in GE13, while in Terengganu it rises by 4.5 ppts to 56%.

The survey was conducted among 1,206 voters across all states in Peninsular Malaysia as well as Sabah and Sarawak through telephone interviews between April 3 and 9.

Respondents were selected through random stratified sampling by ethnicity, age, gender and parliamentary constituency, Ibrahim said.

Although the survey shows that BN has lost some Malay support, Ibrahim said this disadvantage has been mitigated by splits among the opposition parties.

“Despite going it alone, PAS continues to hold on to core Malay supporters. Due to the split in Malay opposition votes, the Pakatan Harapan and PAS face an uphill challenge to win seats as the BN block of voters is fairly solid,” he said.

“The split in opposition votes appears to prompt some undecided voters to go back to BN in some states as they are loyal to none of the parties, but may be more pragmatic in their choices or want to be inspired by [BN] leaders. BN will prevail despite a lower vote share,” he said.