SUPPORT for Barisan Nasional (BN) in GE14 dropped across all communities – rural and urban, Malay or non-Malay – triggering a Malaysian tsunami that ousted the ruling coalition, a study has found.

A quantitative analysis of the GE14 results by political scientist Tom Pepinsky showed that BN support among rural Malaysians, its traditional support base, had also fallen.

“Rural Malaysians continue to be more pro-BN than urban Malaysians in 2018,” Pepinsky, said in a blog post at https://tompepinsky.com/2018/05/12/ge14-the-malaysian-tsunami-in-figures/.

“But it also remains the case that regardless of the level of urbanisation, district Malay population is a prime driver of the BN vote share,” said the associate professor of Cornell University in the United States.

“The difference simply is that the predicted level of BN support is lower, all across the board.”

GE14 ended BN’s reign as the longest serving elected government in the world when it lost 54 out of the 133 parliamentary seats it won in GE13.

BN also lost control of seven state governments it controlled, leaving it only with Perlis, Pahang and Sarawak.

Pepinsky’s study tallies with the findings of Malaysian analysts who said there was a wide rejection of BN over issues such as the unpopular goods and services tax (GST) and corruption allegations against former prime minister Najib Razak.

Pollster Merdeka Centre found that the anti-BN wave in the last days leading up to the May 9 polls had come even from its traditional supporters – civil servants and security personnel.

For instance in Putrajaya, where 99% of voters are civil servants, BN only managed to gain 49.5% of the popular vote. The rest went to Pakatan Harapan (PH) (36.7%) and PAS (14.8%), Merdeka Centre found.

“There was a late vote swing against BN that benefitted PH and PAS,” said Merdeka Centre’s Ibrahim Suffian.

The anti-BN swing benefitted PH in the West Coast states, leading the coalition to capture the BN stronghold of Johor as well as Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Perak and Kedah.

In the Peninsular east coast, the anti-BN wave allowed PAS, the opposition party with the biggest presence, to reclaim Terengganu and retain Kelantan with a bigger majority of state seats, Ibrahim said.

A regression analysis in Pepinsky’s study showed a dramatic decrease in baseline support for BN candidates in all states in the Peninsula including the areas of Putrajaya and Kuala Lumpur.

The sharpest declines were seen in Kedah and Selangor, said Pepinsky, but BN support also went down in Perlis, Malacca, Negri Sembilan and Putrajaya.

In GE13, the predicted mean BN vote share in Putrajaya, Johor, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca was above 0.5 points, on a scale of 0 to 1. Zero meant no votes while 1 signified 100% support for BN.

These were the only four states where BN vote share was above the 0.5 mark in GE13. All the other states on the scale showed BN support at below 0.5 points.

Johor had the highest BN vote share at close to 0.6 points in GE13.

In GE14, the vote shares for BN in Putrajaya, Johor, Negri Sembilan and Malacca all fell to below 0.5 points.

The BN vote share everywhere else in the Peninsula fell even further below the 0.5 mark.

“But it still remains the case that Johor is a BN stronghold (relative to other states), and Terengganu and Kelantan are not,” Pepinsky said. – May 15, 2018.