The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition has won the crucial Ijok by-election with a bigger majority of 1,850.

Election Commission returning officer Haris Kasim announced that BN's MIC candidate K Parthiban bagged 5,884 votes while PKR's Abdul Khalid Ibrahim, 4,034.

The majority is 1,850, which is higher than the 2004 general election result, where BN won with a majority of 1,649. It has added 201 votes to its previous majority.

Interestingly, both parties have increased their vote tally by around 500 votes, partly due to the higher turnout of voters and the absence of independents.

The ruling coalition took 58.6% of the voters while PKR, 40.1%.

BN won in seven polling districts while PKR took Malay-majority Kampung Ijok and Chinese-majority Pekan Ijok * [see correction below] .

Click here for the official results

According to the official EC tally, Bestari Utara, one of the polling centres, registered an unusually high number of ballot papers issued but not returned - a total of 142.

It appeared that these ballot papers were given out to voters but somehow they have taken them away instead of putting them into the ballot box. The number of unaccounted ballot papers represent almost 30% of the 500 ballot papers issued in one of Bestari Utara's voting stream.

All the ballot papers which had been issued in other polling districts were duly returned apart from Jaya Setia, which has only one unaccounted ballot paper.

Malay, Chinese change votes

The defeated Khalid said after the results were known that PKR intends to contests the results and reveal the incidences of bribery and phantom voters.

"This is the dirtiest by-election in the country's history," he said.

Khalid added that he was unprepared for the "viciousness of the political methods" by the other side to win.

"I appreciate the dilemma of the people in Ijok to have been threatened by the fact that if you choose the opposition, you will not be given any development grants. This threatening feature is a very undemocratic way of managing the people's resources."

PKR lost three of the four Malay-majority districts - Jaya Setia, Bukit Badong and Simpang Ijok - but retained Kampung Ijok.

This translates in a swing of Malay voters to BN, but the opposition appeared to obtain a slight swing of Chinese voters in its favour.

Najib: No phantom voters

MCA leader Ong Ka Ting refused to comment on the swing among Chinese voters against the government. He said that the party has yet to analyse the results.

"Nevertheless, we should look at the big picture that BN has won," he said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said that the result is a "good precursor" to the upcoming general elections as this could be the last by-election.

When asked about the allegations by the opposition on the present of phantom voters, Najib said tersely: "There are no phantom voters. Full stop."

He added that BN never used "underhand tactics" in its election campaigns.

When asked about the fate of PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is former deputy premier, Najib said that he preferred not to "say too much".

"I'd rather you draw your own conclusion."

Highest turnout in history

The voter turnout in this hotly contested by-election is an unprecedented 83.08 percent - the highest in by-election history.

In the 2004 general election, the turnout was 76.17 percent, or 9,411 voters.

When the polling closed at 5pm today, a total of 10,195 voters had cast their votes.

Of the nine polling districts, Malay-majority Bukit Badong scored the highest with 90.10%. Another five saw over 80% turnout.

The lowest turnout is in Indian-majority Tuan Mee, 79.9%, Chinese-majority Pekan Ijok, 75.1% and Chinese-majority Batang Bestari Selatan 68.6%.

*Correction: Earlier this evening, malaysiakini reported the unofficial results for Pekan Ijok as BN - 605, PKR - 624. However, the official results are BN - 605, PKR - 584. PRK did not take this Chinese-majority polling district as reported, but it has done significantly better compared to the 2004 general election (BN - 761, Keadilan - 306). We regret the error.

It is expected that unofficial results are sometimes inaccurate. In any case, based on the unofficial results which came from our sources from various counting centres - all but one had been correct - malaysiakini announced that BN had won handsomely at 7.05pm, more than one-and-a-half hour before the results were declared by the Election Commission.