EARLIER during the fourth day of campaigning on November 8, I had predicted that the outcome of the general election (GE) will turn out to be the toughest to predict yet. 

As we enter the last lap of the GE, it still remains tough to predict, although some patterns have emerged based on many surveys. 

Barisan Nasional (BN), helmed by Umno, which was tipped to win at the start of campaigning, is now trailing behind Perikatan Nasional (PN) and Pakatan Harapan (PH). 

The battle between PN and PH is now neck and neck as we enter the last day of campaigning, with some 112 seats combined with the seats of the winning coalitions in Sabah and Sarawak. 

This is as good as a hung parliament, which occurs when a winning coalition obtains 111 seats (or 110, as one candidate has died). 

If you understand statistics in the context of probability theory, you’ll be humbled enough to know that a poll does not accurately represent a coalition’s chances of success. 

In recent years, the reliability of political polling to predict the outcome of an election has been put into question. 

But this is not to say that political polling has no value or because it usually has a relatively small sample size, political surveys are useless and cannot be used to generalise on the opinion of a huge population as alleged by Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. 

Many of current surveys on the GE are mere propaganda tools, he claimed, depending on whether the owners of the surveys are vested in entities close to certain politicians. 

Suffice to say there are conditions where even a relatively small sample can be used to generalise opinions of a huge population as long as the sampling method involves an element of randomness in selection and the sample represents the makeup of the population. 

But we don’t have to look at surveys to predict the outcome of GE. Political analysts and observers have always made their predictions before every GE using theoretical constructs and assumptions, which do not have to be quantitative. 

And in most cases when the majority of analysts predicted a certain coalition would win, it turned out to be right. Rarely were they wrong. 

In the case of Malaysian GEs, analysts were always right on their prediction with one exception – in 2018, when PH won against all odds.

This GE, many analysts are saying BN’s days are numbered. From the favourite to win the election among the three coalitions, it has emerged third in rankings, overtaken by PN and PH. 

How can such a thing take place and what is the basis for this drop to the third position? 

We can see it in a number of events. The turning point from favourite to third place happened on Nov 1, when in unveiling its candidates, Zahid dropped a number of Umno ministers, thus reviving the internal infighting between Umno’s court cluster and the minister cluster at such a critical time. 

During the campaigning period itself, on a number of occasions, it looked like Umno was campaigning against itself like a sort of a civil war, appearing to be campaigning for party polls. 

When its Sungai Buloh candidate, the affable Khairy Jamaluddin, bemoaned the fact that the odd are against him in that constituency because it is a PH stronghold, his president Zahid responded by saying he deserves it because Sungai Buloh is the latter’s personal choice of constituency. 

In a GE campaign, as a leader of the party, you don’t train your gun at your own comrade. Then when there is an allegation that you are offering someone a ministerial post should BN win, you admit to it, leading to the accusation that you harboured an ambition to take over as prime minister, and then you argue the post is determined by the king’s appointment, thus sabotaging your own poster boy. 

And when we don’t see the loudmouths in the Umno court cluster as evident by their conspicuous absence in media reports, this is tantamount to an admission that Umno and BN’s days are numbered. 

By the end of the first week of campaigning, PN and PH had overtaken BN, with PN in the first position and PH coming in a close second. 

Those on the ground have admitted to this neck-and-neck battle between the two on the 13th day of campaigning. Only an upset will cause BN to emerge victorious.

So as campaigning comes to a close, it looks like either PN or PH will win with a wafer-thin majority, which is as good as a hung parliament. 

If this is the case, then it is something the people will not relish, as they look forward to a victory with a handsome majority that will substantially reduce their suffering, unlike a government with a tenuous majority that will rule over them and risk continued instability. 

Only another upset will see a winning coalition with a substantial majority. – November 18, 2022. 

* Jamari Mohtar reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.