SARAWAK STATE ELECTION 2021: ANALYSIS OF RESULTS AND COMMENTS

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PRN Sarawak 2021 or the 12th Sarawak State Election (2021) results witnessed a very strong performance of the Gabungan Party Sarawak (GPS) as expected by most analysts.

The governing coalition won 76 seats, which is even higher than the 73 seats that I predicted under the maximum case scenario, Party Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) won 4 seats, while Pakatan Harapan was badly thrashed with DAP winning only two seats. Details are given in the table below:

I ran a multiple regression analysis over the election results of the constituencies selected throughout the state and discovered that 88.7% of the Malay/Melanau voted for GPS. Some 36.9% of the Chinese electorate also voted for GPS, compared with 18.8% in the 2018 General Election. Meanwhile 60.3% of the Dayak voters voted for GPS, while the balance mostly went to PSB, followed by Pakatan Harapan and Independent candidates. Popular votes obtained by the three parties are shown in the first table, while the breakdown of votes by race is in the table below:

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The debacle of the Pakatan Harapan in this election is worse than expected, against the background of the general sentiment ‘Sarawak First’ adopted by GPS. This election also rejected totally the pro-independence parties that mainly appeared just before the election.

The voters turnout was very low at 60.7% for the whole of Sarawak, the lowest being in the Chinese dominated constituencies where these were as low as 44%. Generally people think that most Chinese voters were undecided and therefore preferred not to vote. It is hard to predict what the scenario will be in PRU 15 if most of the Chinese come out to vote. In the past, high voter turnout, particularly in Chinese majority constituencies, would favour the opposition parties. Should that happen, it may not be as sweet for GPS as it is now.

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DAH IKHWAN