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(Part 2) GE15: Was the ‘Green Wave’ powered by young voters? | Kini News Lab | Malaysiakini
(newslab.malaysiakini.com)
Ok split in 3 because it's a lot. Interactive sections not included, except for one in this part: 1/3 MAIN ARTICLE: Malaysians are split on generational lines when it comes to voting, GE15 scoresheet data shows . In his family, Mohamad Fakhrul Fahmi Mat Yusop, 28, is an anomaly. Casting his ballot for the second time last year, the Gombak resident was the only one to have voted for Perikatan Nasional.
His older siblings, some much older, came of age in the Reformasi era and their political loyalties were with Pakatan Harapan chairperson Anwar Ibrahim and his allies. Growing up in the Klang Valley, Fahmi's older siblings witnessed the large political rallies in Kuala Lumpur, and voted against their parents' favoured candidates from BN.
But Fahmi, who spent many years in an Islamic college in Terengganu, had different views.
"My friends in Klang Valley mostly voted for Harapan, but those from the East Coast are PAS voters. I voted for PAS too in 2018," he told Malaysiakini.
Although he was already leaning towards the then Gombak PN candidate, Azmin Ali, he still read through all the major coalition's manifestos.
"To me, they all sounded more or less the same. But I was more convinced by PN because I was certain of their Islamic roots.
"I didn't want to vote for Harapan because in the short time they held federal power, we saw all these issues like LGBT and so on. I didn't want a repeat of that.
"I also didn't want BN because there were so many corruption cases. Look at the (former premier) Najib (Abdul Razak) case. The corruption is rife. So PN is a better option," he said.
Fahmi may be an outlier in his household, but in Gombak, he is not rare. In fact, his family's voting pattern reflects that of voters of their generation in that constituency.
Interactive map Gombak - Youngest Only In the 15th general election (GE15), Fahmi voted in the Wira Damai polling district, which had 10 polling streams. The average age of voters in the youngest stream (Stream 10) was 20.1 years old. PN received 57 percent of the votes in this stream, followed by Harapan with 33 percent.
Gombak - Oldest only However, in the oldest stream (Stream 1) with an average age of 62.7, Harapan marginally won with 35 percent of the vote share. BN voters, like Fahmi’s parents, made up 28 percent of the votes here, compared to just nine percent in the youngest stream.
Gombak - Full Result In total, PN emerged as the winner in the Wira Damai polling district with a vote share of 47 percent. What happened in the polling district was also largely reflective of sentiments in Peninsular Malaysia, where voting patterns are split between generations. Wira Damai is in Gombak - a hotly contested parliamentary seat in Selangor. Here, PN gained a significant amount of votes from the youth, while more senior voters supported BN or Harapan. The latter carried then Selangor menteri besar Amirudin Shari into Parliament with a marginal 43.7 percent of total votes.
Peninsula - Full Result In GE15, both Harapan and PN won an equal number of 71 seats out of the total 165 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia whereas BN secured the remaining 23.
Peninsula - Oldest Only If we exclude the six Peninsular parliamentary seats involved in election petitions, and consider only the votes of elderly voters (typically those above 60) in GE15, BN and Harapan would have captured 64 and 63 seats respectively, and PN's total would have decreased to 32 seats. Peninsula - Youngest Only But if the preference of only younger voters, (typically those below 30) like Fahmi were counted, PN's seat count would have increased to 83, followed by Harapan with 64 seats. BN would have only won 12 seats.