Standing for elections generates some useful data for political parties and analysts.
Our counting agents whom we deployed to almost all the 60-odd voting streams in the Ayer Kuning constituency, brought back the results from all these streams. Some interesting trends can be teased out of these results.
The polling station with the highest proportion of ethnic Malay voters was Kampung Batu Masjid (071/48/05), which has an ethnic breakdown of 95.5% Malay, 2.3% Chinese and 1.5% Indian. The candidates for the state assembly received votes in the following proportions:
Table One: Kampung Batu Masjid (072/48/05)
| Stream: Year of birth | PSM | PH | BN | PN | Pej2 | Total |
| 1: 1945 – 19751 | 0 | 43 14.3% | 152 50.7% | 103 34.3% | 2 | 300 (86%) |
| 2: 1975 – 2004 | 2 | 42 9.2% | 171 37.5% | 242 53.1% | 1 | 456 (84%) |
| Total | 2 | 85 (11.2%)3 | 323 (42.7%) | 345 (45.6%) | 3 | 756 (85%)4 |
- Year of birth for voters in this stream
- Pej = Pejuang
- The percentage of voters in Kg Batu Masjid who voted PH
- Voter turnout
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Only 11% of the voters in Kampung Batu Masjid voted for Pakatan Harapan while 88% voted for either Barisan Nasional or Perikatan Nasional. This pattern of voting should be contrasted with that observed in Coldstream New Village, where the population is 98.9% ethnic Chinese.
Table Two: Coldstream New Village (072/48/20)
| Stream: Year of birth | PSM | PH | BN | PN | Pej | Total (% turnout) |
| 1: 1950 – 1956 | 15 6.3%6 | 160 67.2%5 | 57 23.9% | 4 1.7% | 2 | 238 (68%) |
| 2: 1956 – 1972 | 8 2.8% | 218 76.8% | 57 20.1% | 1 0.4% | 0 | 284 (81%) |
| 3: 1972 – 1985 | 6 | 311 86.6% | 41 11.4% | 1 0.3% | 0 | 359 (70%) |
| 4: 1985 – 2004 | 6 | 246 85.4% | 33 11.4% | 3 1% | 0 | 288 (56%)7 |
| Total | 35 (3%) | 935 (80%) | 188 (16.1%) | 9 (0.8%) | 2 | 1,169 (66%) |
5: 67.2% of voters in stream 1 voted PH
6: Interestingly, the meagre support for PSM was greatest among the oldest voters – perhaps they have memories of the Socialist Front that was active in this region of Perak in the 1960s
- 56% of the voters listed under the fourth stream turned out to vote
Table 2 reflects the overwhelming support for PH in this Chinese-majority polling station. However, 16% of the voters here voted BN. This means that at least 15% of the Chinese voters here chose BN over the other parties (reasoning – even if all the non-Chinese voters at this station had voted BN, that would give BN only 1.1% of the votes. But BN received 16%).
Support for BN was highest among the oldest voters – those in Stream 1. The fact that the government gave out housing lots to about 100 families in this new village some 30 years ago might be a factor contributing to this electoral support.
There also seems to be total aversion to PN – a stark contrast with Kampung Batu Masjid where PN received the highest votes.
The overall turnout in Kampung Baru Coldstream was only 66% – quite markedly less than the 85% turnout observed in Kampung Batu Masjid.
Apparently, older voters tend to remain loyal to BN while PH and PN seem to be preferred by the younger voters. This is also reflected in the next three tables.
The Sungai Lesong polling station voter breakdown by ethnicity is Malay 82%, Chinese 10%, Indian 6.9% and others 1.2%. The voting by stream is given in the table below:
Table Three: Sungai Lesong National School (072/48/02)
| Stream: Year of birth | PSM | PH | BN | PN | Pej | Total |
| 1: 1944 – 1964 | 2 | 45 13.8% 8 | 208 64% | 67 20.6% | 3 | 325 (72%) |
| 2: 1964 – 1979 | 7 | 104 26% | 181 45.3% | 104 26% | 4 | 400 (80%) |
| 3: 1979 – 1992 | 1 | 80 23.5% | 108 31.7% | 150 44% | 2 | 341 (68%)9 |
| 4: 1992 – 2004 | 5 | 83 20.3% | 133 32.6% | 187 45.8% | 0 | 408 (78%) |
| 15 | 312 (21.4%) | 630 (43.2%) | 508 (34.8%) | 9 | 1,459 (75%) |
- The percentage of voters in Stream 1 who voted PH
- 68% of voters listed in Stream 3 turned out to vote on 19 November 2022
One trend that stands out in the table above is that support for BN declined from 64% among the oldest voters to 32.6% in the youngest stratum of voters while the PN vote showed exactly the opposite pattern rising from 20.6% in Stream 1 to 45.8% in Stream 4. The voters for BN and PN made up about 70% – 85% of the voters for each age group.
A similar trend can be seen in the following two polling stations, which served the Kampung Simpang Tiga voting district. The ethnic distribution of voters in Kampung Simpang Tiga is 50.1% Malay, 19.6% Chinese, 19% Indian and 19.4% Orang Asli.
Table Four: Bidor National Secondary School (072/48/17 – Kampung Simpang Tiga)
| Streams: Year of birth | PSM | PH | BN | PN | Pej | Total (% turnout)10 |
| 1:1942 – 1957 | 3 | 58 18.6% | 194 62.4% | 16.70% | 4 | 311 (69%) |
| 2: 1957 – 1967 | 5 | 90 25.1% | 199 55.4% | 65 18.1% | 0 | 359 (80%) |
| 3: 1967 – 1978 | 5 | 163 34.8% | 169 36% | 130 27.7% | 2 | 469 (72%) |
| 4: 1978 – 1986 | 1 | 138 30% | 156 33.9% | 164 35.6% | 1 | 460 (71%) |
| 5: 1986 – 1993 | ||||||
| 6: 1993 – 1998 | 1 | 135 29.3% | 147 31.9% | 178 38.6% | 0 | 461 (71%) |
| 7: 1998 – 2004 | 1 | 138 28.2% | 139 28.4% | 211 43.1% | 1 | 490 (75%) |
Note 10: Turnout as a percentage of voters registered in the SPR list for each stream
Table Five: Batang Padang Religious School (071/14/17 – Kampung Simpang Tiga)
| Stream | PSM | PH | BN | PN | Pej | Total |
| 1 | 9 | 68 24% | 179 63.3% | 9.5% 27 | 0 | 283 |
| 2 | 5 | 74 24.7% | 166 55.3% | 51 17% | 4 | 300 |
| 3 | 11 | 131 32.1% | 166 40.7% | 96 23.5% | 4 | 408 |
| 4 | 5 | 90 23.2% | 197 50.8% | 96 24.7% | 0 | 388 |
| 5 | 3 | 138 32.2% | 164 38.3% | 121 28.3% | 2 | 428 |
Insights
Voting in Ayer Kuning, a rural agricultural community, appeared to be largely along ethnic lines with a large proportion of Malay voters (about 88%) voting BN or PN, and a large proportion of non-Malay voters (about 80%) voting PH. This implies that voters all over the country are deeply influenced by the big picture narrative, and they vote for the coalition that they believe is the best for their community. It demonstrates how greatly voting behaviour is polarised between the Malays and the ethnic minorities.
Support for BN was strongest in Stream 1 – the oldest voters – in all the four polling stations analysed, including the Kampung Baru. PN did better than BN among the younger Malay voters
The turnouts were fairly consistent across the ages in each polling station except for Coldstream New Village, where the turnout for the youngest voters was the lowest. Perhaps a significant number of them were working out-of-town. The turnout out among Malay voters in Kampung Batu Masjid was higher than the Chinese voters in Coldstream New Village. We don’t have enough data to generalise this observation to apply to the whole constituency.
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