Changes in the Voting Behaviour and Survival of Authoritarianism in Malaysia: Statistical Analysis on Election Results from 2004 to 2018

Abstract

Abstract
How does the voting behaviour of Malaysian electorates affect Malaysian politics? Does it change? Is it fixed? And how does it affect political regimes in Malaysia? This paper analyses the general election (GE) results in Malaysia from GE11 to GE14 and discusses Malaysia’s voting behaviour and authoritarianism. The analysis is conducted with several Bayesian regression models diverging from one underlying model. The results show that there were changes in the voting patterns. Two crucial changes in the voting patterns emerged, i.e., the ethnic voting patterns and the economic voting patterns.
Ethnically-mixed constituencies were the stronghold of Barisan Nasional in GE11. From GE12, Malay voters supported Barisan Nasional (and also PAS in GE14), and Chinese voters supported Pakatan Rakyat (and Pakatan Harapan in GE14). Middle-classes were supportive of Barisan Nasional in GE11 and GE12. This tendency changed from GE13. Moreover, in GE14, there was a negative correlation between income and the vote shares of Barisan Nasional, while FELDA residents had been consistently its stronghold. These changes in the voting behaviour did not contribute to the rise of a two-party (coalition) system in Malaysia due to the authoritarianism in Malaysia. This paper considers that the strategies of authoritarianism in Malaysia to garner seats are composed of two parts. Firstly, Barisan Nasional’s regime abused authoritarian electoral rules that forced opposition parties to fight elections under unfair conditions. Secondly, Barisan Nasional’s long-lived regime resorted to ethnic populism that appealed to ethnic sentiments of the ethnic majority and developmentalism that hid social issues from citizens and portrayed the state as a prime mover of economic growth in which material merits were provided to them, i.e., ideologies to retain political loyalties of people which have side effects. The authoritarianism will probably continue. The regime change in GE14 was an exceptional
regime change due to a national-level severe contest between Barisan Nasional and PAS for Malay votes, which coincidentally helped Pakatan Harapan. There are several conditions necessary for the following regime change in Malaysia, namely: (1) elimination of authoritarianism, (2) a national-level competition between UMNO and other Malay-supporting parties, such as PAS, and (3) mobility of the voting behaviour.

Keywords: Malaysian Politics, General Election, Authoritarianism, Populism, Developmentalism, Voting Behabiour, Ethnicity, Class, Economy