KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 21 — Perikatan Nasional (PN) secured most of their votes from rural voters in the 15th general election (GE15), while voters in urban seats still preferred Pakatan Harapan (PH), according to research firm Politweet.
Breaking down the voter demographic into three categories — rural, semi-urban and urban — it said the Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin-led party saw 44.68 per cent of rural votes going to them, 34.35 per cent from semi-urban votes, and only 23.33 per cent from urban votes.
Politweet added that Barisan Nasional (BN) on the other hand, only took home 32.80 per cent of rural votes. This is an 8.99 per cent drop from GE14 when it scored 41.79 per cent of rural votes.
Its analysis showed that BN lost many Malay votes in all states and federal territories in the election which sent the coalition to a thrashing defeat, securing only 30 MP seats.
Including votes given to Muda, PH performed the worst in rural seats. The coalition only managed to win 21.55 per cent of rural votes.
But the party’s performance went up in semi-urban and urban seats, getting 41.77 per cent and 58.45 per cent of the total votes respectively.
In terms of how many votes were cast in these three categories, Politweet’s data showed that urban seats accounted for 4,142,331 votes (or 31.27pc), semi-urban seats accounted for 4,203,784 (or 31.74pc) of the total votes.
Rural voters held the biggest majority, where it accounted for 4,898,917 (or 36.99pc) of the total votes. The total number of votes counted in the ballot box was 13,245,032 votes.
PH emerged as the biggest coalition in Parliament with 82 seats but still fell short of the 112 needed to form a simple majority government, while PN managed to swing voters their way and secured 73 seats.
The BN coalition, which had pushed for national polls to be held this year ahead of the GE14 expiry next year, only garnered 30 seats.
Politweet’s data for PH includes Muda, who they formed an electoral pact with for GE15.
