When Prime Minister Najib Razak attributed the ruling BN's poorer showing in the 13th general election (GE) to a "Chinese tsunami", predictably it unleashed a tsunami of angry responses and strong denials.
Not unsurprisingly the opposition - no strangers to playing up the ethnic card - attempted to give Najib's matter of fact observation a racial slant and presented as though the PM was assigning the blame of BN's poor performance entirely on the Chinese community.
DAP led the chorus of disapproval, launched a staunch defence of Pakatan and the Chinese community. A number of political analysts too jumped into this raging debate and offered support to the "Malaysian / Urban Tsunami" school of thought.
This narrative was readily accepted, almost as self-evident, by many Malaysians as well as the foreign media and commentators. This was somewhat puzzling since there was a complete absence of quantitative or rigorous data analysis to support the premise.
The only attempt to disprove Najib's hypothesis came not from an academic or political scientist but from Lim Guan Eng.
It goes like this. The Chinese consists of 30% of total registered voters and assuming 80% of them vote for Pakatan, then it would result in 24% of the total votes (30% X 80%).
Since Pakatan received around 51% of the popular votes, it would imply that the balance 27% of the votes came from the non-Chinese.
Thus this, according to the Penang CM, proves that Pakatan received more support from non-Chinese than the Chinese voters.
This explanation was widely circulated in the social media by the Red Bean Army operatives and the Pakatan supporters.
The biggest problem with this explanation is not that it is wrong or logically flawed (as a matter of fact it is) but it simply does not disprove the "Chinese Tsunami" hypothesis at all.
When Najib referred to "Chinese Tsunami" factor, he did not imply that Pakatan relied solely on Chinese votes for the 13th GE.
What he meant was a drastic swing in Chinese support to Pakatan resulted in poorer than expected performance for BN.
Even a casual observer of Malaysian politics would be cognisance of the fact that it is not possible for any political coalition to form the federal government with the sole support of single ethnic group, be it the Malays, the Chinese or others.
Indeed this is the raison d'etre why PKR, PAS and DAP - parties with widely conflicting ideologies and objectives - have put aside their differences and come together to form the unlikely political collective of Pakatan Rakyat.
In this article, using parliamentary constituency data, I will prove mathematically that, (1) There was indeed a Chinese Tsunami, (2) The swing in the Chinese support adversely affected BN's electoral performance, and, (3) The Chinese Tsunami was the single most important factor behind Pakatan's improved electoral showing.
In doing so I will also show that the "Malaysian / Urban" Tsunami is a mere myth.
In order to prove my hypotheses I have conducted extensive data analyses, using various mathematical techniques both simple and cutting-edge.
To generate macro level results I have used simple mathematical optimisation models.
To discover overall voting patterns, multivariate statistical regression analysis was utilized. To estimate constituency level voting patterns I opted for more advanced statistical techniques- Prof Gary King's Ecological Inference Model and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method (in particular Gibb's sampling).
For this article though, in order to be accessible to the average reader I have kept mathematics to the minimum. However my data sets, analyses and outputs (summary/ scatter plots / tomographic plots / etc.) are readily available to serious researchers, academics and scientists.
Proof # 1: The Grand Malaysian Political Equation
Malaysia's electoral demographic consists of 53% Malays, 30% Chinese, 7% Indians with the balance 11% comprised of the bumiputras of Sabah and Sarawak as well other smaller ethnic groups. Chinese, despite their 30% voting population, actually have much bigger footprint on the electoral outcome than other ethnic groups, even more than the Malays due to two reasons - higher electoral turnout and en bloc voting.
In the last GE many have observed almost all full attendance of the Chinese voters with some even turning up in wheel chairs and stretchers.
The estimate for Chinese voters' attendance ranges from 90 to almost 100% while for other ethnic groups the figure was around 75% to 80% range.
Secondly while all others ethnic groups were politically fractured the Chinese were remarkably united. This leads to the most important equation in Malaysian politics;
Electoral Win = Min (85% Chinese votes) + Min (35% Non-Chinese votes)
This equation holds true for national as well as constituencies' levels. This formula can be interpreted in a number of ways.
First and foremost, this means for Pakatan to win the election - with 85% of Chinese support level in the pocket - all it takes is a mere 35% share of non-Chinese votes at both national and constituency levels.
There are 84 constituencies with Chinese voters' ratio exceeding 30%. If Pakatan could garner a 35% minimum of non-Chinese votes then they would win all these 84 seats.
Adding these 84 seats to the 28 constituencies they already won in other districts, Pakatan would able to win the GE and form the federal government with a total of 112 seats.
Secondly, if the Chinese support is higher than 85% or voters' ratio is more than 30% then Pakatan needs even lower levels of support from the non-Chinese.
In fact in areas where Chinese voters exceed 60%, Pakatan doesn't even require any non-Chinese votes at all for they can win entirely with Chinese support.
Thirdly, this formula also highlights the gargantuan challenge that BN faces when the Chinese support reaches 85% level for Pakatan.
To put things in perspective, quantitative analysis of the 12 th GE puts the overall national-level Chinese support to BN at 40%. But in the 13 th GE, my calculation shows the support has drastically nose-dived to a mere12%.
For BN to achieve 2/3 majority in the Parliament BN requires at least another 15 seats (133 + 15 = 148). However if we examine the seats held by Pakatan, realistically there are only 11 seats that are even possible for BN to win since the rest of the seats are either in "red" areas (areas with more than 30% Chinese voters) or in the "green" areas (areas in the Islamic belt states).
As such with a drastic swing in Chinese voters' support to Pakatan, it is impossible for BN to regain the 2/3 majority in the Parliament.
With the political equation and strategic political context explained, let's now examine Pakatan's accusation of flawed electoral process where they managed to garner 50.87% of popular votes but only to win 40% of parliamentary seats.
Based on my statistical analyses of election result, Pakatan did succeed at the national level strategic objective as given by the above equation.
Nationally they managed to obtain 88% of Chinese and 36% of non-Chinese votes share. And that's precisely why they were able to secure 50.87% of the total votes cast.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) they could not replicate the same performance at the micro (ie constituency) level.
What this implies is that their 36% share of non-Chinese votes was highly concentrated and narrow-based - that is most of their votes came from the Islamic-belt states of Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah plus a few rural conservative areas.
For example Pakatan secured around 60% of non-Chinese votes share in Kelantan but in most other states the support level plunged to well below 30%.
Interestingly in Kedah and Kelantan, the two states under ultra conservative PAS rule, the Chinese support for Pakatan was at the lowest.
Despite DAP/Pakatan's massive propaganda exercise to portray PAS as a benevolent party that treats non-Muslims with utmost respect and fairness, the voting choice of the states' Chinese seems to indicate otherwise.
Unlike Pakatan leaders and pro-Pakatan commentators have suggested, this analysis conclusively shows their lack of success at parliamentary constituency level was not due to vote rigging or gerrymandering but due to Pakatan's own weakness and lack of broad-based voters' mandate.
Based on my detailed calculations around 51% of votes for Pakatan came from the Chinese despite the fact that they only make 30% voting population.
As such contrary to Pakatan's claim, it is Pakatan that is a minority coalition since its votes were overwhelmingly from a single ethnic group.
Had Pakatan won the election, Pakatan would have been a minority government without a true mandate from all ethnic groupings.
As for BN the reason for the failure to gain a majority of votes (as opposed to a majority of seats) is not attributable to a lack of electoral support but due to overwhelming rejection by one single community (ie the Chinese) while a vast majority of the all other ethnic groups strongly supported the coalition.
As such one can say that justice had been served with BN winning the majority of parliamentary seats and forming the Federal government.
Thus this analysis mathematically proves Najib's hypothesis of Chinese Tsunami and its highly significant impact on the electoral performance of both BN (negative) and Pakatan (positive).
In the next article (Part 2), I will provide even more quantitative evidences to support my hypotheses.
