What can we deduce from Telok Bahang GE14 result.

A few days ago, while going through a report that the Telok Bahang assemblyman, Zolkifly Md Lazim gave residents of a fishing village in his state constituency a taste of breaking fast together, out of curiosity I tried to find out from which party is Zolkifly from and the margin he won the seat in GE14.

Telok Bahang state constituency is located at the Northwestern corner of Pulau Pinang.

The 2018 Ethnic breakdown of Telok Bahang's electorate is as shown. Majority is Malay (65.94%)

This seat was first contested in 1974 and until GE14, it remained in the hand of BN for 10 consecutive election.

In 2008 GE12 and 2013 GE13 despite the political tsunami and with Pas in Pakatan Rakyat (PR), BN managed to win this seat in both the elections.

In 2013, BN's majority improved slightly from 2008 52.8% to 53.6%.

If I assumed that in GE12, GE13 and GE14, the number of votes given to Pas remained the same at around 12.2%, and if I removed 12.2% from PR's 46.4% in GE13, PR left with only 34.2%.

In GE14, PH won the seat by capturing 45.7% of the votes to BN 42.1% and Pas 12.2%. By assuming the Chinese votes given to the opposition remained about the same in GE12, GE13 and GE14, there was a swing of 11.5% of Malay votes from BN to PH in GE14 that caused the downfall of BN. The swing in Malay vote could be due to 1MDB fiasco and Dr. Mahathir's effect.

Similar to situation in Telok Bahang, I guess it was this 11% swing in the Malay votes that caused BN to loose the GE14.

.