KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 14 — Barisan Nasional (BN) chairman Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi today pronounced it an “impossible” mission for rival coalition Perikatan Nasional (PN) to win even 25 parliamentary seats in the coming November 19 general election, contrary to the predictions of certain pollsters.
Those survey results in PN’s favour were mere “propaganda” conducted by pollsters close to certain political parties or their leaders, he said in a Facebook post this afternoon, his second post for the day.
“It is impossible for the PN to win 25 seats nationwide because the number of their members is so small and some of them do not believe in PN's aims, and there are also people leaving Bersatu in masses,” said Zahid who is defending his Bagan Datuk federal seat in Perak.
He claimed that PN is playing a game of “psychological warfare” on social media to portray itself as the popular team.
“The thing that stands out about Bersatu is that they have a large source of funds, with the ability to plant more than double the amount of flags than their competitors, even though the party is only one-year old.
“All of this is purely cosmetic and the fact is that PN is not popular and has been rejected at the grassroots level of the people in this country.
“Hopefully BN members will not be influenced by the false propaganda created by BN's enemies who are trying various ways to minimise BN's impact in this general election,” Zahid said.
It is unclear which exact survey Zahid was talking about.
On November 4, independent pollster Merdeka Center released the results of a survey of 1,209 people which showed that 24 per cent of voters preferred BN, 26 per cent favoured Pakatan Harapan (PH) and about 13 per cent supported PN.
On November 11, news portal Free Malaysia Today quoted Merdeka Center director Ibrahim Suffian as saying there could be a swing in Malay votes towards PN, which would allow it to leapfrog over BN.
Ibrahim also reportedly said that the real winner of the increasing support for PN would be PAS, with the Islamist party likely to sweep all the seats that are made up of at least 70 per cent Malay voters, and cited an upcoming poll result from his research outfit.
