We tried to make PAS win GE14 with this awesome simulator made by MalaysiaKini

Now that the polling date has been announced, the battle for Putrajaya truly begins. On April Fool’s, we published 2 contradicting articles which provided “evidence” in support of both the ruling government and the opposition, and from the general response, it really proved that people are really that people are really interested in trying to figure out who’s going to WIN the election.

So you could only imagine our surprise (and excitement) when we stumbled upon this gorgeous program created by MalaysiaKini.

This GE14 simulator lets you experiment and test some of your wildest scenarios, using the results of GE13. Think the Malay tsunami’s going to win PH the election? How is PAS going to lose all their seats? What happens if all of BN’s Malay voters decide to vote for Pakatan instead?! This simulator can answer all those questions.

 

But before we begin, here’s some of the limitations of the simulator

The prediction won’t be completely accurate due to a few reasons:

1. The simulator only takes into account Malay and non-Malay voter swings. For example, what happens if all of PAS’s non-Malay supporters supported Pakatan Harapan instead? This also means that Sabah and Sarawak will be excluded from the predictions, because of the many types of ethnic groups in East Malaysia.
2. The simulator doesn’t follow the newest electoral map, as GE14 will be the first election using the new boundaries.
3. Voter composition, and number of voters would also still be based on GE13 statistics.
4. Finally, PAS and Amanah are still one and the same, so we’ll get very hypothetical when it comes to splitting the Malay votes for PAS.

Now let’s look at the features that the simulator provides. It lists out the total amount of parliamentary seats after the swing of voters, along with the percentage of total votes held by each party. Beneath the main counter, it will also predict the change of state seats in each state, but we won’t be focusing on this for the article.

Also, you’ll need to remember that a party needs 112 parliament seats to form the federal government. For simplicity’s sake, we fixed the number of seats in East Malaysia as per GE13 in all our of scenarios (BN 48 seats, PH has 9, PAS has none), and also assume there’s no change in voter support in PH and PAS by default. Got all of that? Good. Now let’s begin with our first scenario:

 

1. The Malay Tsunami needed by PH to form the government

As you may have heard, there has been talk about a “Malay tsunami” from the rural areas in favor of PH, one of the reasons being Tun Mahathir siding with PH. Politicians from BN however, has brushed aside the idea, and said that support for BN will remain strong. But just for theory’s sake, how tall must the Malay tsunami wave be for PH to win?

After triple checking the value we changed, BN lost a staggering 25 seats with just 10% of Malay vote swing to PH. Meanwhile, PAS and PH gained 6 and 19 seats respectively. Adding the seats from East Malaysia, BN would have 108 seats, PAS 27 seats, while PH would have 87.

10% of Malay BN voters rebel 

With this 10% swing, PH could form the government only through a coalition with PAS, as they would together have 114 seats. Seeing how PAS once warned PH not to associate them with BN, maybe that’s a possibility (??)? But PH was the one that broke up with PAS, so let’s try to take away 10% of the Malay votes for PH, and 10% of non-Malay votes from PAS:

With our hypothetical disturbance for PAS and PH’s voter base, BN actually lost less seats, but would still easily maintain a majority. So without a united PAS and PH, it would seem a Malay tsunami wouldn’t do much for PH at all.

But purely in terms of BN Malay voter’s swing, how much would PH require to win by themselves? The answer is 59%. Of course, if PH could win more seats in Sabah and Sarawak, the climb would be less steep, because at 50% of BN Malay voters swing, PH can already gain 100 seats in Peninsular alone.

Alternatively, PH could count on PAS losing like 40% of Malay voters and 70% of non Maly voters, ON TOP of BN losing 30% of Malay voters. So for PH to win, a large portion of Malay BN voters would have to vote PH, regardless.

 

2. The Chinese voter swing for BN to regain 2/3 majority in parliament

A 2/3 majority is required in the parliament to pass certain laws, and also to make certain amendments to the constitution, and a party would have to win 148 seats for that. In GE13, BN won 133 seats, and needed 15 more for the 2/3 majority. Some analysts have suggested that a swing of 10 – 15% of Chinese votes to BN would be suffice for a win with 2/3 majority, so let’s test that:

15% non-Malay PH voters switch to BN

BN will still be short of 4 seats for the 2/3 majority. On top of that, the swing accounts for non-Malay voters, so it wasn’t just the Chinese that changed the support. But what if we took into account the split of PH and PAS like before?

Suddenly, BN has regained the 2/3 majority, and PAS and PH both suffered some losses.

 

3. PAS losing all its seats in GE14

According to a GE14 forecast by Rafizi Ramli’s Invoke, PH is set to end up with 100 to 105 seats in the parliament, while BN would still retain control of the government with 117 to 122 seats. But most shockingly, Invoke predicts PAS to lose all its seats in the coming election! So we tried to make that happen, and it was much harder than we imagined:

99% Malay voters switch to PH

We used 99% because the simulator annoyingly doesn’t allow “100%”, but even after losing 99% of Malay voters, PAS would still be able retain 1 seat in Selangor. Perhaps more surprisingly, even when 99% of Malay voters from PAS goes to PH, BN still gained almost as much seats as PH. So what did it take to make PAS lose all their seats? We had to reduce their non-Malay support by 12% as well.

So PAS losing that much support just seems like a very extreme scenario, but while we’re on extreme scenarios, we couldn’t resist testing a couple more.

 

4. BN loses all its non-Malay votes to PH!

With Malays being the majority supporters BN, have you ever wondered what would happen if BN lost all of their non-Malay voters? Would it be a devastating blow? Would it not matter to BN at all? Well, here’s the result:

BN actually lost 55 seats without the non Malay votes! And PAS managed to gain 19 seats in the process as well. State-wise, BN lost a total of 5 states to PH, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca on top of Selangor and Penang. This outcome was similar to the Invoke’s prediction, the only difference was that PH would capture Johor and Kedah instead of Perak and Negeri Sembilan.

 

5. The Chinese and Malay tsunamis happens at the same time!!

Assuming that both the scenarios mentioned above happened at the same time, where BN loses 50% of Malay voters, while PH loses an equal percentage of 50% of its non-Malay voters. How would that turn out for the election?

Hey, everyone will walk away pretty equal in this situation. BN wouldn’t be able to form the government without a coalition with someone, and the same goes for PH. Perhaps this is the rumoured kingmaker position PAS is predicted to be in by some.

 

6. PAS forms the government!!!(!)

We’re deep in the rabbit hole now. Although not a scenario most people would consider, we just wanted to see what kind of change is needed for PAS to claim Putrajaya. First, we made a third of BN’s Malay voters defect to PAS, and the results were stunning:

33% of BN Malay voters switched to PAS

Not only did PAS gained 39 seats, even PH gained 24 seats as a result. But 60 parliament seats is only about half of what’s required to form the government, so we pushed the number further up. Surprisingly, even at 99% of BN Malay voters switch to PAS, they would still have less than 80 seats, so we tried to convert both PH and BN Malay voters at an equal percentage. At the end, we needed about 80% from both sides.

Well close enough, but still short of one seat to form the government it seems. Might the non-Malay voters give PAS a better chance? Hardly, because PAS would need 95% of non Malay voters from both BN and PH to match this result. So whats the minimum swing of both Malay and non Malay voters that PAS need to win all by themselves?

40% of Malay voters and 35% of non Malay voters from both BN and PH votes for PAS

In the last elections, BN got 85 seats with 45.7% of the total votes. But here, PAS will get 124 seats with 47.9% of total votes! It’s actually kinda impressive because they can form a new government by themselves!

 

OK, tired already. Why don’t ugaiz try it out yourselves?

Think we’ve missed something? Think our scenarios are not accurate enough? Why don’t you try it out yourselves here! And don’t forget to let us know if you found something interesting in the comments. But there are 2 conclusions that we can confidently (quite) draw from this fooling around a) it’ll be very hard for PH to win the election, b) BN will stand to gain in 3 corner fights.

There so many factors coming into play this election (an ex-PM leading the opposition for the first time against the ruling government, a movement advocating vote spoiling, 3 cornered fights in a large number of states, the recent redelineation, and a polling day right in the middle of the week), it’ll be anyone’s guess how it’s going to turn out.

But what’s for sure is, whoever you’re supporting will definitely be needing your vote. The General Election is a once every half a decade thing, for people like you and us to decide where you want the country to go next. So in the end, our votes will be more predictive than any simulator.