KUALA LUMPUR: The newly-concluded 14th General Election (GE14) saw Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) dominance in popular votes of about 50 per cent, as was recorded in GE13.
Popular votes is the total number or percentage of votes received by a party.
The findings were based on the data of the number of votes garnered by three main parties contesting in the election. PH led the race with 5,685,252 votes, followed by Barisan Nasional (BN) 3,624,921 votes (or 32 percent); and PAS 2,043,159 votes (18 per cent).
Selangor emerged PH stronghold for being the biggest party deposit with overall popular voutes of 65 per cent, compared with BN (19 per cent) and Pas (16 per cent).
Meanwhile, Johor, which was always known as a BN stronghold, also fell to PH who garnered a bigger popular votes of 59 pe cent, compared with BN (33 per cent) and Pas (eight per cent).
Sabah and Sarawak also saw a ‘voters tsunami’ when the two, which have always been a BN deposit, had shown sign of cracks in GE14.
Sabah was penetrated by WARISAN that contributed to the biggest shift in the state with 67 per cent of the votes swung to the other side, 32 percent with BN and 1 per cent for Pas.
In Sarawak, even though BN managed to retain the state administration, it had lost several traditional seats as PH continued its supremacy in popular votes.
PH also managed to close the gap and garned a total of 348,803 popular votes (or 46 per cent), compared with BN (53 per cent or 403,259 votes) and Pas (1 per cent or 10,591 votes).
In GE13, the coalition saw a PKR-DAP-Pas collaboration which garnered popular votes of 50.9 per cent (5,623,984 votes), compared with BN that recorded 47.4 per cent or 5,237,699 votes.
Reports by: Che Wan Badrul Alias, Siti Salmiah A. Hamid, and Julia Fiona