Madani sweeps up Mahkota, snatches PN votes but Chinese support dips

The Madani coalition won the Mahkota by-election with a landslide victory, with BN picking up almost 28,000 votes and bagging all polling districts.

The results also suggest that the federal coalition had managed to sway a number of Perikatan Nasional's Malay voters in the 15th general election to flip.

However, the victory is against a backdrop of poor turnout of just 54 percent and an apparent decrease in Chinese support.

This analysis compares data from this by-election, the GE15 when Mahkota voters cast ballots for the Kluang parliamentary seat, and the March 2022 Johor state election.

Polling district level data that BN displayed during the vote count showed that the Madani coalition's joint effort managed to win back three polling districts - Kampung Melayu I, Kampung Melayu II and Sri Tengah - that PN previously won during GE15.

It also reversed PN's gains in Kampung Baru, a district that the opposition paid a lot of attention to during the by-election in hopes of getting it to flip.

PN's overall performance also declined in comparison to the past two times Mahkota voters went to the ballot box.

Not counting postal votes in all scenarios, PN's vote share in Mahkota had dropped to 20.8 percent (7,222 votes) compared to 30.5 percent (10,575 votes) in GE15 and 21.3 percent (7,296 votes) in the state election.

Its share of early votes - which came from the Mahkota military camp - also declined to 25.9 percent (1,088 votes) compared to 58 percent (1,825 votes) in GE15 and 42 percent (1,022 votes) in the state election.

The gains signal a continuation of rising Malay support for the federal coalition, which was also observed during the Nenggiri by-election.

Lower Chinese turnout

Meanwhile, while BN and Harapan votes combined gave the former a whopping 79 percent of votes, this appeared to have been achieved with lower Chinese support.

In Bandar Tengah, Mahkota's largest Chinese polling district where almost 80 percent of the population is Chinese, only 1,335 votes were cast - of which 1,212 went to the government’s candidate.

By comparison, 1,925 votes were cast in Bandar Tengah during the GE15, in which Harapan garnered 1,442 votes and BN, 349.

Today's results are closer to the state election, where 1,418 votes were cast in Bandar Tengah, of which 1,042 voted Harapan and 299 voted BN.

The state election, like today, also suffered from poor turnout.

PN's support level in Bandar Tengah is relatively unchanged, from 95 votes in the state election, 129 votes in GE15, and 123 votes today.

Other non-Malay majority polling districts where turnout is lower today compared to GE15 include Taman Lian Seng and Indah Jaya.

While not a complete boycott, the numbers do indicate that a sizable number of Chinese voters did not partake in the Mahkota by-election.

The Akmal factor

There was widespread unhappiness among Chinese Malaysians from before the by-election over attacks from Umno Youth chief Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh against Seputeh MP Teresa Kok over the halal certificate issue - in which the latter was seen as defending non-Malay rights.

The unhappiness was exacerbated when Johor BN deputy chief Nur Jazlan Mohamed described Chinese voters as opportunistic and implied that a poor turnout would mean they did not want to vote for a non-Chinese.

This is the second by-election in which there was a notable drop in Chinese voter turnout after the Sungai Bakap by-election.

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