KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 16 ― Malay-speaking Facebook users in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor are losing interest in all major political parties especially the DAP, a Politweet report found.
While interest in all parties in the two states dropped, DAP suffered a significant 30 per cent drop in interest between May and July this year, according to the report.
PKR was the least affected party, losing six per cent of interest, followed by PAS (11 per cent) and Umno (12 per cent).
“The common pattern is that Malay-speaking users in Labuan, Sarawak, Kelantan and Penang are showing greater interest in major political parties (except DAP in Penang and PAS in Sarawak).
“Malay speakers in KL and Selangor are turning away from political parties, particularly DAP,” the report said.
In total, DAP lost 220,000 of its Malay-speaking audience since May 2017, a 20 per cent nationwide drop. PAS was the only other party to lose its Malay audience, with a 3 per cent drop.
Both PKR and Umno managed to maintain status quo in terms of their Malay-speaking user base on Facebook.
“On a national scale Malay speakers make up 81 per cent of potential voters interested in political parties, which makes decreasing audience sizes very significant,” he said.
The report also shows that BN has the largest exclusive in four out of six language categories listed in the study.
BN holds more than 50 per cent of interest among Malay only speakers, English only speakers, Malay-English bilingual speakers, and Malay-Chinese bilingual speakers.
In the Chinese-English bilingual speakers and trilingual speakers category, BN retains 33 per cent share compared to other parties.
BN also has a higher share its audience coming from the younger generation, aged between 13 to 30 years old while 54 per cent of its audience are aged between 13 to 30.
In contrast, only 47 per cent of the Opposition’s audience are from the same age category.
