After writing his brilliant analysis of the voting numbers in, Malaysiakini (go subscribe to them lah – stop reading the drivel on MSM), Dato’ Ramesh Rajaratnam now provides a follow-up piece explaining how he crunched the numbers.
There are statistics and then there are damned lies. Being an accountant, I would consider that my forte is in number crunching. And so the GE13’s results were, perhaps, an accountant’s dream. Or nightmare, depending on which side you were on.
I want to touch on a touchy topic to dispel some illusions. Unfortunately, up to now, for reasons perhaps best knows to themselves, no political analyst has done the simple math on the voting pattern. Perhaps when the leader cast an overall condemnation of sorts, the minions backed off. I saw an unfair statement attributed to a hardworking people who, in all fairness, want a better Malaysia. I do not for one moment think anybody in their right mind, at least as a Malaysia loving Malaysian, would run amok in the streets due to dissatisfaction over the GE13 results. I do expect some histrionics but no repeat of past horrors. The landscape has totally changed for the better since the 1960’s. There is certainly more awareness and if the GE13 results were anything to go by, rejection of extremism en masse.
I had written in Malaysiakini my post GE13 analysis “Gross Distortions in Malaysia’s Voting System” and my conclusions thereon. Many people have written to me to ask how I got some of the numbers as they are unable to get them directly from the Election Commissions (SPR’s) website. I wrote based on public information from various sites, including that from the SPR’s. The SPR too had revised its numbers since I first wrote my article 3 days ago based on SPR’s original disclosure. However, my estimates were accurate even after the SPR’s changes. I’m now doing the simple math.
Total no of registered voters: 13.3 mil
Total no of valid voters who voted: 11.09 mil (about 85%)
Total estimated registered Chinese voters: 29.8% (High side/ Low side: 25%)
Total estimated registered Indian voters: 0.9 mil or about 6.8%
Therefore total no of Chinese who voted: 3.3 mil high side (2.7 mil low side)
Assume 75% Chinese voted for Pakatan: 2.4 mil high side (2.1 mil low side)
Total Pakatan votes: 5.6 mil
Therefore Chinese voters in Pakatan’s results: 42.8% high side (37% low side). Therefore, the balance of the 3.2mil (57%) of the votes Pakatan got came from Malays, other Bumiputras and Indians. If you deduct the Indian votes (say estimated 60% to Barisan), at the very minimum, 52% of the Pakatan voters were Malay/Bumiputra. On the high side, Malay/Bumiputra support could have been 56%.
So if the word “tsunami” was used to describe the shift in the voting pattern, wasn’t the term misapplied, mon ami ?
Dato' Ramesh Rajaratnam is an accountant who loves numbers because their interpretation can make one a friend or foe.
Posted on 9 May 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
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