YOURSAY | ‘Low turnout is not what matters most. Winning is.’
'Hallucinating' Hadi should worry more about rising tide against PAS - Kit Siang
Palmyra: PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang said that the low voter turnout at the Port Dickson by-election is a sign that voters are turning against Harapan. How on earth the PAS ulama came to this conclusion baffles me tremendously.
To me, the low turnout could be due to several factors, none of which has to do with low support for Harapan.
These include (1) outstation voters view the by-election as not crucial for them to come home and incur costs; (2) BN had boycotted the by-election, so BN members don’t bother to vote; (3) voter fatigue after a recent GE14; (4) a combination of the above.
To say that the low turnout is a sign that Harapan is now getting less support from Malaysians is a sign of ignorance of basic statistics and simple logic.
If the percentage of popular votes obtained by Anwar Ibrahim was lower than that obtained by the previous Harapan MP, then there is a basis for Hadi making that conclusion.
But Anwar’s popular vote (71%) was higher than that obtained by Danyal Balagopal Abdullah in GE14 five months ago. So Anwar managed to improve the popular vote obtained by Harapan, implying that there is now greater support for Harapan from the PD folks.
We can only say that for the PD voters, and cannot extrapolate it to the whole of Malaysia. Hadi should be very cautious about making inferences from statistics if he has not done Statistics 101 before.
Lepak: Indeed, this idea that somehow if the turnout was higher, the result would be different is an illusion.
While obviously no one can say with certainty how things would result if turnout is higher, it is a scientifically proven fact that when large groups of people act in a certain way, that trend does not reverse or change if you make the group bigger or smaller.
It is difficult to predict the behaviour of individuals, but the larger a group gets, the easier it is to predict how they will behave as a group. That's what polling firms depend on for their findings.
Of course, they have fine-tuned their methods to choose the people they speak to, but generally, they speak to about 1,000 or so people, and then confidently make their predictions about how tens of thousands will act - and are usually accurate.
Even in your personal experience, you will find that when it comes to one individual, it is difficult to determine how that person will act in certain situations.
But put 10 people together, and you can pretty much say with certainty that there will be, for example, six people who will react in one way, another three who will act in another way, and one who will take a third way.
And the bigger the sample, the easier it is to make behavioural predictions. So Hadi and all those proposing all kinds of "ifs" are wrong.
A bigger turnout may have altered the margin of victory one way or another, but Anwar would still have won comfortably.
Anonymous #07988903: Harapan has had strong support from the non-Malays. Now all they need to do is to work on the Malay population.
As a sitting government, it has all the power at its disposal to do just that. All Harapan needs to do is implement policies and other reforms with the fight against corruption as its linchpin, and it will definitely bury PAS and Umno for good.
Hadi: Low PD polls turnout shows tide turning against Harapan
New Horizon: It is likely Hadi is not able to explain to PAS members why the party performed poorly in the by-election.
First, it contested when Umno didn’t because Hadi thought that Umno members would vote PAS since he and Najib have such a cosy relationship and on top of that, new Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi and his team have been romancing Hadi.
So what happened? The contest backfired for PAS and to sidetrack the issue, Hadi came out with a nonsensical reason because he knows his PAS members and followers are not too smart at political analyses.
Anonymous 2436471476414726: It is no surprise that the turnout is low in a by-election as compared to a general election. This is especially so when the outcome will not impact a change in government.
Furthermore, most voters are sure of prime minister-in-waiting Anwar's comfortable victory that they assume their votes do not matter.
Hadi, you know these reasons as well but chose to spin a story on PAS defeat.
Newday: Again, a fine example of reverse logic from PAS. Even with lower voter turnout than GE14, Anwar won with a bigger vote margin than GE14.
Consequently, the overall percentage of votes for Pakatan Harapan increased, not decreased. That is the statistic that matters, Hadi. None other.
Roger 5201: One would not be surprised if Umno claims the low turnout is due to their supporters deciding to stay at home.
The statistics say six out of 10 voters showed up. Of these, seven out of 10 voted for Harapan, two for PAS and one for an ex-Umno MB despite his free nasi Arab.
So Allah has chosen to bless Harapan instead of the opposition. Hadi should ponder on His message instead of speaking nonsense.
Jaguh: Hadi cannot calculate. About 43% of registered voters in PD are Malays. That represents about 30,000 voters. Why only 7,000 plus voted for PAS?
Hmmmmmmmm: Hadi, perhaps you are right about the people being angry with the Harapan government and staying away from the polls as a way to protest.
But the fact that they decided to stay away rather than vote PAS says a lot about what they think of PAS. No matter how angry people are with Harapan, they would still not vote PAS.
That should be the message you should be getting if what you think about the low turnout is correct.
Gerard Lourdesamy: The Malays in the rest of the country have rejected PAS. This has been confirmed in PD. It is the culture of fear and hatred for other races and religions that has kept PAS in power in the two Malay-dominated states at the expense of progress and development.
PAS is intent on taking the Muslims back to the dark ages in defiance of the intelligence and capacity to learn and excel that Allah has given to each human being.
Hadi can be rest assured that he will never become PM or DPM, and PAS will never form the federal government until the day he goes to meet his Maker.
Oxymoronictendencies: A close to 60% turnout in a by-election where many voters are not based in the electorate is pretty impressive. To then get 72% of the votes cast is equally impressive.
This overwhelming vote of support for Anwar would appear to be anything but a “protest vote”.
Someonroutthere: Harapan would lose some support because there are always be some who are not happy with current issues.
However, what Hadi failed to say is that PAS and Umno are both losing support at multiple rates faster because their respective supporters cannot fathom the PAS/Umno engagement.
Overseas: The thing is, Hadi, the people - good, honest hard-working people - voted to end the reign of a corrupt leader and government.
We hope that our present government are able to repair the damaged civil service, apply the rule of law and restore economic prosperity for all. We believe that slowly but surely we will succeed, and our nation will be great again.
How on earth you can try to spin your party’s showing in PD to that of Harapan losing support is a mystery. Now please do try to at least act like a responsible opposition party.
Anonymous_1423626825: Low turnout is not what matters most. Winning is. Low turnout in future polls can continue as long as Harapan wins and PAS loses.
If this trend continues, PAS will slowly die of natural death.
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