SEMENYIH: Barisan Nasional (BN) wrested back the Semenyih state seat from Pakatan Harapan (PH), 9 months after the pact won the seat in the 14th General Election (GE14).
The BN coalition won the seat by a comfortable 1,914 majority today.
The win by BN was due to a huge 10,878 vote swing from PH. In GE14, PH won the seat by a 8,964 majority.
The victory was also second for the BN which had retained the Cameron Highlands parliamentary seat on Jan 26 by a 3,238 vote majority.
It was also the first seat, whether state or federal to have exchanged hands since GE14.
BN’s Zakaria Hanafi garnered 19,780, followed by PH’s Muhammad Aiman Zainali who received 17,866 votes.
Parti Sosialis Malaysia’s (PSM) Nik Aziz Afiq Abdul was way behind in third place with 847 votes and independent Kuan Chee Heng on fourth place with 725 votes.
The win sees PH now having 49 seats, BN 6 seats and Pas its one seat in the Selangor State Assembly.
Both the PSM and the independent candidate also lost their respective deposits.
Election candidates who do not secure at least one-eighth of the votes cast, will have their RM5,000 deposit for a state seat forfeited.
The Semenyih by-election also saw the best electorate performance since GE14, when it recorded 73.3 per cent voter turnout.
Early voting on Feb 26 saw a 78 per cent voter turnout or 676 of the 858 registered early voters.
The EC had expressed hope for the voter turnout to touch the 70 per cent mark in the Semenyih by-election.
In GE14 voter turnout for the Semenyih state seat stood at 88 per cent out of then 46,839 voters.
The percentage recorded at Semenyih also bettered the turnout for the by-elections held last year for the state seats of Sungai Kandis (49.8 per cent), Seri Setia (44 per cent) and Balakong (43 per cent) in Selangor.
The figure also exceeded the total voter turnout for the Port Dickson parliamentary seat by-election which was at 58.3 per cent as well as the Cameron Highands by-election which recorded a 68.79 per cent voter turnout.
Returning officer Datuk Mohd Sayuthi Bakar announced the by-election result at Semenyih by-election vote tallying centre at the Seri Cempaka Hall, Kajang Municipal Council, Saujana Impian, Kajang.
The tallying centre was a hive of activity as ballot boxes began arriving after polls closed at 5.30pm and the vote tallying tallying process began.
The Semenyih by-election was called following the death of incumbent PH assemblyman, Bakhtiar Mohd Nor, from Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia, last Jan 11.
A total of 53,411 people were eligible to vote in the by-election.
The Semenyih state constituency has 53,520 ordinary voters, with 10 of them having voted through post, leaving 53,411 people were eligible to vote today.
This is the sixth by-election to be held after GE14.
Three of them were state-by-election, namely Sungai Kandis on Aug 4 and Balakong and Seri Setia, simultaneously on Sept 8.
The other two were parliamentary by-elections for Port Dickson (Oct 13) and Cameron Highlands (Jan 26).