Final comment on Johor GE results

Well, I wasn't far off in terms of my predictions for both parliament and state seats in the most southern state of Malaysia.

At parliament level, I predicted that PR would win 7 seats at best, which would have included Segamat (where Chua Jui Meng was contesting) and Labis (where Chua Tee Yong was contesting). I was wrong on these 2 places when the voters gave BN narrow victories in both the seats. Also, I got it wrong in both the Muar and Batu Pahat seats, for which I predicted a PKR and UMNO victory respectively. It went the other way around. I realistically thought Muar is more vulnerable compared to Batu Pahat due to the closer majority for Muar as compared to Batu Pahat. Then again, how wrong can I be? Puad Zarkashi lost unexpectedly in Batu Pahat, which automatically means that 2 Deputy Ministers of Higher Education was defeated in the same GE, a first I would say.

Hence, this explains the 5 parliament seats PR won in Johor. I did told my friend before that PR is going to win 5 seats at most, but this was before I did the analysis. I tried to detect possible mood swings by going as micro as possible. It nearly pulled off I can tell you that.

At state level, I predicted that PR would win 19 seats at best, which would have meant denying BN their 2/3 majority in Johor for the first time in history. Can you imagine having come this far in UMNO's fortress? In the end, PR won 18 seats, which just fell 1 seat short of denying BN their 2/3 majority in the State Assembly. There are a few seats that I got it wrong, but I would like to single one out in particular: PALOH. I had predicted a narrow victory for DAP in this seat, for which they fielded an Indian candidate. This is a very mixed seat, but with the Chinese making up the majority at 44%, followed by Malays at 37% and Indians at 17%. You have to feel realistic that DAP is just going to nick this one, but in the end, the frustration was there for all to see. Imagine... losing by just 103 votes! The number of spoilt votes? 403 votes. Imagine where those spoilt votes could have gone to. This I have to remind you again ladies and gentlemen, there is a fine line between winning and losing, and this was one of them.

I guess that is all for now. I will make a full analysis for all the seats when I have the time to do so. Who knows, it might turn into a book for people to read, and they will know more about the guy who wrote 2 articles for Kee Thuan Chye's book "March 8: Time for Real Change".