In the paper titled “Scrutinising the DAP’s success in the 2023 Malaysian state elections”, the former two-term parliamentarian found that DAP gained an average 5% increase in support from 2022 to 2023, with an 8% increase in Malay support and 2% increase in Chinese support.
The study used granular polling station and polling stream data for the 47 seats DAP contested in the six state elections to explore how voter support was influenced by DAP campaigning with former foe Umno.
DAP won 46 of the 47 state seats it contested, losing only Derga, a 61% Malay-majority seat in Kedah, to a Bersatu candidate.
Ong said a key question arising from the cooperation between Pakatan Harapan (PH) and Barisan Nasional (BN) in the unity government was the extent to which it would strengthen the appeal of both coalitions, especially among Malay voters.
“DAP would probably still have won at least 41 of these state seats without transferring BN/Umno votes, but working with Umno allowed DAP to win by comfortable margins some of which would usually be marginal seats for the party,” Ong said in the report.
“Generally speaking, DAP gained the largest transfer of Malay votes in older polling streams – where the allegiance to BN is still stronger – compared to the younger polling streams.
“The increase in support for DAP was highest in Negeri Sembilan at 6.7%, followed by Selangor at 5.2%, Penang at 4.3% and finally Kedah at 1.4%.”
However, the study also found that even with the cooperation of Umno, DAP was unable to garner significant Malay support, losing by 14% to Perikatan Nasional (PN).
The study said that four out of five Malay voters who previously supported BN in seats contested by DAP voted for PN in the state elections.
The average support for PN in the 47 DAP-contested seats increased from 13.1% in the 15th general election to 19.2% in the state elections.
“Going forward, DAP’s stranglehold over these seats may well become weaker due to demographic changes and if turnout and support for PH and DAP should decrease among non-Malay voters,” Ong said.
He added that the analysis conducted in the paper should be extended to examine the benefits of campaigning with Umno in PKR and Amanah seats, and the benefits of campaigning with PH in Umno seats.
He said the working hypothesis was that Umno would have increased its share of non-Malay support by campaigning with PH.
However, he noted that this would not have been enough to compensate for the loss of Malay support to PN in most seats, with the exception of certain seats with significant non-Malay votes in Selangor and Negeri Sembilan.