PETALING JAYA: Pakatan Harapan (PH) needs to get its act together if it wants the Undi18 voters to support the coalition.
Senior Fellow at Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research Prof Azmi Hassan said the Johor state election saw voter turnout at 55% but the number of voters were higher.
He said during the 14th general election (GE14), the number of people who cast their votes in Johor was 1.1 million but in the recent state polls it was 1.4 million.
“Johor saw an additional 750,000 new voters with 180,000 coming from the Undi18.
“The question is how did this extra 300,000 people vote, even if we take the breakdown to 50% Undi18, it shows they voted for Barsian Nasional (BN).
“Based on the popular vote, BN got 50% more votes than PH, which indicates that the Undi18 voters were not in favour of PH,” he said.
However, he said one cannot lump all the votes given to the Opposition together simply because voters made their own decision on who to pick – PH or Perikatan Nasional.
Azmi said we cannot compare Johor with Malacca because Undi18 did not come into play during the Malacca polls.
He said we also cannot look at statistics as one must look at the numbers since in GE14, it was 1.1 million while in the state polls it was 1.4 million.
“If we want to look at the overall popular vote, of course the Opposition on the whole got more votes. PH and PN could have formed the state government.
“But it is very clear to everyone that the Opposition continues to shoot itself in the foot as they never seem to learn,” he said.
Azmi said the Opposition lost in Malacca, Sarawak and Johor because they were fighting against one another.
He said if it continues in this vein and lose in GE15, then it only has itself to blame.
University Malaya political analyst Awang Azman Awang Pawi said PH will find a tough road ahead in trying to convince the younger voters to support them.
He said there are a number of reasons why the Opposition faces an uphill task.
“We conducted a survey in Johor involving 1,776 respondents aged 18 to 24 and found 51% of them chose BN in the just-concluded Johor state polls.
“We also found a low turnout from this group as their political knowledge is very low,” he said.
He added those within this age group who voted followed how their parents voted.
Awang Azman said most of them did not vote because they did not see it as important or had other things to do than going to polling stations.
The Opposition, especially PH, needs to work hard to convince this group to come out and vote and to support them, he added.
PH and PN, he said, will continue to lose as long as they place their self-importance above everything else.