PKR does not fear multi-cornered fights in the coming general election (GE15), said party deputy president Rafizi Ramli, who emphasised that the primary focus is to win over the fence-sitters.

He said the party stands a good chance of taking Putrajaya if it could win the votes of those who haven’t made up their minds.

He said that Invoke’s data for June showed there are 62% voters who are fence-sitters and PKR needs to only convince 30% of them to win a majority to form the government.

“Multi-cornered fights don’t necessarily disadvantage Pakatan Harapan. The issue is, PH needs to appeal to the fence-sitters,” Rafizi told The Malaysian Insight.

“Multi-cornered fights allows more options for fence-sitters. With more options, the fence-sitters will go to the party with more constructive ideas and coherent policies.”

He said four-cornered contests are expected in the general election because Pejuang, Perikatan Nasional, and Barisan Nasional will be competing with PKR for seats.

“I believe that in our core traditional areas which are urban, semi-urban with multi-racial seats, we still have the upper hand.

He said 110 of the 165 seats on the peninsula are multi-racial.

“So in multi cornered fights, PKR and PH have the advantage in the majority of the seats.”

He said 62% of the 2,500 respondents surveyed by Invoke said they were still undecided.

“Most said they didn’t know or hadn’t decided yet. But some just didn’t want to reveal who they preferred.”

Rafizi said that in a multi-cornered fight, anything more than 40% of the vote is a win. 

“Currently we have 15% hardcore supporters among the voters, Umno maybe has 20% and PN, maybe 12%.”

Rafizi said the only concern is whether PKR is able to maximise its election campaign in the next three months.

“The most (vulnerable) party in a multi-cornered fight is PKR. DAP is not (vulnerable) because the party mostly stands in Chinese and non-Malay majority seats.

The former Pandan MP said PKR would lose the seat if another party should steal even a small percentage of its traditional voters. 

“For DAP that won’t make any difference, but it will affect us and of course, to a certain extent, Amanah who is also standing in multi-racial seats.”

As for PKR’s chances in GE15, Rafizi said it is still too early to tell.

“While the results in Malacca and Johor favour Umno, if we look closer, it shows that support for the party did not grow.

“Umno won both states with about 40% of the vote. Of course the problem was when the votes were split between PN and PH.

“So no matter what Umno says, its support has not grown since 2018.” – August 4, 2022.