Rafizi: Less than 30pct Malays back Harapan, non-Malay support crashing

Summary

• Rafizi Ramli warns that stagnant Malay support and declining non-Malay support mean PKR and Harapan are unlikely to win the next general election if the trends persist.

• The PKR deputy president also identifies low confidence among voters in the government’s anti-corruption efforts.

• He says he is sounding the alarm now to avoid overconfidence, like what happened with BN led by Najib Abdul Razak during GE14.

Politicians keen to gain power and positions by winning in the upcoming PKR polls should beware, warned incumbent deputy president Rafizi Ramli.

He said, contrary to his rivals’ alleged aspirations, PKR and Pakatan Harapan are not in a position to win the next general election.

He cited data that shows insufficient levels of Malay support for the coalition, while support among Chinese and Indian voters is crashing dramatically.

For Malay voters, support for Harapan is at 27 percent as of April, and has been slowly increasing from 20 percent in August 2020.

Meanwhile, combined Malay support for BN and Perikatan Nasional has dipped to 48 percent. A breakdown of how each coalition was performing was not shown.

More starkly, the rate of undecided Malay voters is at 26 percent.

35pct Malay support or bust

Rafizi said if PKR wants to maintain 30 to 40 seats in Parliament, it needs Malay support to be at least 35 percent.

“We have two more years, if for every month it (the Malay support) is stagnant or just goes up by one percent, I am very worried.

“When we don’t hit 35 percent (Malay support), no matter what we do, hugging, bringing peace to the grassroots, we won’t win the next general election,” he said at a ceramah in Seremban last night.

Rafizi did not show a sample size, margin of error, or methodology when presenting the data.

However, his past work at Invoke had usually used a representative sampling method, albeit with a much larger sample size.

The way he presented the data also suggested he was considering a scenario in which Harapan contests the next general election without partnering with BN.

Chinese, Indian support crashing

On top of insufficient Malay support, Rafizi said Harapan’s vote bank among non-Malays was also fast eroding.

Chinese and Indian support crashed from around 56 and 50 percent respectively in August 2024, to 31 percent in April.

Rafizi said this is a trend that should worry not just PKR, but also its partner DAP.

“Some people will say ‘don’t worry lah. Chinese voters won’t vote for PN because PN has PAS’.

“Well, what do you think the Chinese voters will do then? They will do the same as we suffered in (the) Sungai Bakap (by-election), they won’t go out to vote,” he warned.

He said in the past several by-elections, Chinese voter turnout has been less than 40 percent while Malay voter turnout has been at least 70 percent.

If this trend continues at the general election, Rafizi said all the mixed constituencies that PKR contests in will become Malay-majority seats, which, with low Malay support, will spell disaster.

He warned that Indian voters are also becoming increasingly angry towards the government. 

Confidence in economy, but not anti-graft efforts

In explaining voter sentiment, Rafizi said the incremental increase in Malay support is in tandem with overall voter satisfaction towards the government’s handling of the economy, which is now at 31 percent, while dissatisfaction is slowly decreasing to 47 percent.

The economy minister is hopeful that voter confidence in the economy can reach 40 percent by the next general election.

However, this is being weighed down by a different factor, confidence that the government can handle corruption.

The charts he shared showed that dissatisfaction with the government over graft was above 20 percent starting August 2024, and surpassed 30 percent starting January this year.

Confidence in PKR’s ability to address corruption was especially low among Gen Z voters aged 18 to 27 at just eight percent, and millennials aged 28 to 44.

Overall, Rafizi said, PKR was behind PAS in voter confidence on anti-graft efforts.

Learning from Najib’s downfall

The incumbent PKR deputy president said he is aware that some will criticise him for revealing such data publicly.

However, he said this is necessary.

“This is why parties in power lose, because all problems are hidden away.

“Everyone wants to show to (Prime Minister) Anwar Ibrahim, ‘Datuk Seri, you are great, everything is good’,” he said.

He warned that before the 2018 general election, Najib Abdul Razak received 18 reports, of which 17 said he would win.

However, Najib led BN to its first-ever general election defeat that year.

Rafizi is defending his PKR deputy presidency in a straight fight against Nurul Izzah Anwar. Voting in the PKR election is on May 23.

He claimed that the party has been infiltrated by a wave of newcomers who are not interested in the party’s reformist agenda, but are instead motivated by the potential to gain power and positions now that the party is in government.

This is on top of alleged irregularities with the party’s e-voting system, which he said had resulted in the phenomenon where team leaders are defeated in divisional polls while the rest of the team wins.

This has mostly affected those aligned with Rafizi.

Who stays when power is lost?

With his team’s fate in the central election on the line, Rafizi hence said there was a need for the party to make careful considerations for the future.

“We must plan the party’s leadership with the worst-case scenario in mind, which is if we lose in the next general election, what then?

“If we are forced to contest in a situation where (support) is stagnant, if we can’t get votes, what then?

“We need to consider, in such a situation, what kind of leadership do we want in the party?” he said.

“Because when we are in power, we have many friends, but when we lose power, those left are friends who entered the party not because of position, titles, money or power,” he added.

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