In a blog post, Mahathir attributed DAP’s 40 parliamentary seats to the “significant” voter turnout among the Chinese electorate.

He claimed that 95% of Chinese voters came out to cast their ballot in the last general election (GE15).

“As a result, PH, with its larger representation of non-Malays, could have 82 MPs. Meanwhile, despite being the majority population, Malays (excluding Malays in PKR, DAP and Amanah) could only win 73 seats,” he said.

Checks on the Parliament website, however, indicate that there are more than 73 Malay MPs.

Perikatan Nasional alone has 72 Malay MPs, while Umno has 26. There are also more than 10 Malay MPs in Gabungan Parti Sarawak and Gabungan Rakyat Sabah.

Last year, Bridget Welsh of the University of Nottingham Malaysia disputed PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s claim that the Malay voter turnout rate was lower than that of other races in GE15.

Welsh said data she collected showed Malays made up the highest percentage of voters compared with the other races.

According to her analysis, the turnout rate of Malay voters in GE15 was 79% of the number of eligible voters, followed by Indian voters (78%), Chinese voters (69%) and other races (59%).