PETALING JAYA: As candidates hit the ground in the race for the Melaka polls, a look back at the state's election history reveals a contest filled with interesting twists and trends.
The current state polls will see a total of 79 candidates going all out to win the hearts and minds of nearly 700,000 voters in the state until polling day on Nov 14.
Here's a glimpse into the historic state’s colourful election history and the trends that are shaping up today.
Over the years, a notable trend is the bigger number of multi-cornered fights, or seats with three or more candidates.
In this round of the polls, most or 17 of the total 28 seats are multi-cornered fights.
The remaining 11 are straight fights or between two candidates.
But in the 2021 polls, all seats were multi-cornered fights - meaning, every seat had at least three candidates slugging it out in one constituency.
It was a completely different scenario in 2008, when 100% of seats were straight fights.
The biggest contest recorded in Melaka poll history was in 2021 when three seats saw six-cornered fights.
There were six candidates facing off in Gadek, Asahan and Duyong respectively in the 15th state election.
In Gadek, Barisan Nasional candidate VP Shanmugam, from MIC, defeated five others to win the seat with a 559-majority.
Barisan’s Fairul Nizam Roslan, an Umno candidate, also secured the Asahan seat in a six-cornered fight against opponents from PKR or former chief minister Datuk Seri Idris Haron, Gerakan’s Dhanesh Basil and three independent candidates.
A similar feat was achieved in Duyong in the same election, when Umno’s Mohd Noor Helmy Abdul Halem won the seat over candidates from DAP, PAS, Putra and two independents.
Check out the breakdown of the type of contests in Melaka in the graphic below:
The historic state of Melaka has seen its fair share of close calls and landslide victories throughout its polls.
The smallest majority ever won was by Barisan’s Lim Yeow Koon - he secured the Kota Timor seat in 1959 with just 24 votes.
It was a razor thin majority percentage of 0.8%, with Lim’s 1,394 votes against the 1,370 votes garnered by the Malaya Party’s John Leon De Cruz.
Check out the slimmest vote margins won in the graph below:
On the flip side, some candidates have come out as clear winners, after racing ahead of others with a huge majority of votes.
The biggest margin recorded in Melaka to date was by Pakatan Harapan’s Low Chee Leong who took the Kota Laksamana seat in 2018 by 16,173 votes.
It was a three-corner fight between Low, Barisan’s Melvin Chua Kew Wei and independent candidate Sim Tong Him.
Across the years, the number of candidates fielded in the Melaka polls have kept increasing.
In the current polls, the total number of candidates came up to 79 - above the average of 53 candidates in previous years.
In 2021, a record total of 112 candidates threw their hats into the ring.
There’s also an increasing number of women being fielded as candidates in Melaka over the years.
However, their numbers are still relatively small, with men still dominating the candidate list.
Only 17.7% or 14 out of the total 79 candidates in the current polls are women - which is short of the desired goal of 30% representation called upon by the government.
