Merdeka Centre survey: Barisan will prevail in GE14

PETALING JAYA: Barisan Nasional will prevail in the 14th General Election, the Merdeka Centre revealed in its latest survey.

The survey showed that Malay sentiment against the ruling coalition is likely to cause a 7.9% swing in the May 9 polls.

Merdeka Centre programme director Ibrahim Suffian revealed the survey findings at a seminar on GE14 titled "Malaysia Decides 2018: Continuity or Change?" on Thursday (April 26) night.

Presenting the survey results, Ibrahim said that Malay voters count for 62% of voters in the country, scattered across 120 parliamentary seats.

Ibrahim drew up scenarios based on how many seats each coalition or party hopes to win in GE14.

If Barisan hopes to maintain their status quo, Ibrahim said that they need to secure at least 95 seats in West Malaysia.

"At this time, we estimate their support level at 53% of the Malay vote," said Ibrahim.

He said that Merdeka Centre estimates that Barisan would require 47.5% of Malay support to win the 95 seats.

"So right now they have a 5.5 percentage points surplus (of Malay support) nationwide," said Ibrahim.

"They (Barisan) still have the majority of the Malay vote," he said, adding that this was despite a drop in support in some states.

If Pakatan Harapan were to achieve its goal of winning the election, Merdeka Center estimates that it will need to win 100 seats in West Malaysia.

They need to attain 34% of support from Malay voters, assuming that the non-Malay support does not change, he said.

"Right now, they have 20% of the Malay support. That is 14 percentage points (ppts) short of the 34% target," said Ibrahim.

If PAS wants to be "king-maker", the deciding factor if there is a hung parliament, Merdeka Centre sets their goal at 20 seats in West Malaysia.

"They are not counting on the non-Malay votes at all, they get only support from the Malay voters," said Ibrahim.

We estimate that their support right now is 27% of the Malay voters, and they need 39.5% to cross the line, that's 12.5 ppts short, he said.

Ibrahim said that despite the decline in overall support for Barisan in comparison to previous elections, the Opposition still falls short in garnering the votes they need to win GE14.

"If the Opposition cannot get the support they need, this could be fatal come election day," said Ibrahim.

Ibrahim said that the split in Opposition votes may have prompted some undecided voters to go back to voting for Barisan.

"Barisan will prevail despite a lower vote share," he said.

The survey was conducted among 1,206 voters across all states of Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak through telephone interviews between April 3 and 9.

Respondents were selected through random stratified sampling by ethnicity, age, gender and Parliamentary constituency.