PAS fared horribly in GE14

No, PAS did not do well.

There is this general (mis)perception that PAS did well in GE14 because it managed to get 18 federal seats and won control of two states.

As I had pointed out in an earlier post, winning 18 federal seats is actually a worse performance than it did in GE13 where it had won 21 seats, which in itself is worse than the 23 seats it had won in GE12.

The fact that PAS had won over Terengganu this time around is also no big deal. It had won Terengganu in GE10 and subsequently lost it in GE11. In GE12 it had won Kedah but also subsequently lost it in GE13. Given its track record of losing a newly-acquired state after just one election cycle, PAS will probably lose Terengganu in GE15 (though it would be to Pakatan rather than BN, which would be a non-player by then).

Now, what about this statistic: In GE13, PAS had gotten a total of 1,633,389 votes but in GE14 that number had increased to 2,043,159. Isn't that proof that PAS has become more popular?

No.

Syed Husin Ali explains why: PAS experienced an increase in the number of votes received because it had fielded way more candidates than ever before. Their success rate was abysmal though.

PAS had fielded 158 parliamentary candidates in GE14, of whom only 18 were elected, This translates to a miserable 11.4% success rate. (In contrast DAP had fielded 47 candidates and won 42, which translate to an 89% success rate). PAS also holds the dubious distinction of having a record 54 of its federal candidates lose their deposits (meaning these guys actually got less than 12.5% of the total votes cast).

Like I said before, a green tsunami this is not.