KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 – A Pakatan Rakyat (PR) upset in Kuala Besut is looking increasingly remote, after simulations conducted by independent research house PoliTweet.org showed it winning in just 175 of 1,331 possible scenarios.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page today, the pollster announced preliminary findings from its simulations based on voter swing potentials ranging from zero to 10 per cent.

“The results tell us it is unlikely that PR will win this by-election.

“If voter sentiment has not changed since GE13, BN (Barisan Nasional) is assured of a victory with a majority of 2273-3010 and 86 per cent voter turnout,” it said in its posting.

The research house, which tracks social media use in Malaysian politics, added that of the 175 scenarios that went in PR’s favour, only 76 scenarios have a more than 50 per cent chance of victory.

PoliTweet noted that with a minimum voter swing of six per cent, PR would only have a five per cent chance of winning even when compounded with a10 per cent swing in youth as well as postal and early votes.

It estimated that with an eight per cent swing across the youth, postal and early voters, PR would still only have a 15 per cent chance of winning.

In a scenario where PR enjoyed a high nine per cent swing from the youth votes and none from the postal votes, it would still have less than a 30 per cent chance of edging BN out.

But a five per cent swing in the postal votes could improve PR’s odds, although PoliTweet noted that this scenario was highly unlikely.

“The youth vote alone is not enough to guarantee a victory. For a voter swing of 7 per cent, youth swing of 10 per cent and postal swing of 0 per cent the odds are 2.5 per cent,” it said.

As of 1pm, approximately 56.2 per cent or 9,939 eligible voters had cast their ballots in the crucial by-election here today, according to the Election Commission (EC).

Although only a by-election in a small constituency, voting here could have far-reaching consequences that may decide the future of the Terengganu state government and possibly even Putrajaya in the run-up to the Umno party polls later this year.

Barisan Nasional (BN) currently hang on to power in the state by just one seat, and a PAS victory here would lead to a 16-16 deadlock in the 32-seat state assembly.

PAS, the Islamist component of PR, is fielding Azlan Yusof, a local teacher while BN puts it faith on engineer Tengku Zaihan Che Ku Abdul Rahman.

Polling has been incident free while EC deputy chairman Datuk Wan Ahmad Wan Omar said today’s by-election has been the calmest by far.

The Kuala Besut state seat vote, barely two months after Malaysia weathered its most divisive national polls to date, was triggered by the death of its BN assemblyman Dr A. Rahman.

In Election 2013, Rahman had defeated PAS’s Napisah Ismail with a comfortable 2,434-vote majority. The state seat has 17,679 registered voters, of whom 98 per cent are Malays.