The correct way to look at the popular vote

The biggest loser was BN.

A friend recently sent me a Whatsapp message containing an analysis which sensationally mis-concluded that a majority of Malaysians had actually voted against Pakatan Harapan.

This is how that Whatsapp analyst came to his conclusion: Since Pakatan got 48.3% of the popular vote, that must mean the other 51.7% had voted against it.

Superficially that logic seems sound but if you look at the stats more closely, you will see that it is a flawed analysis.

The assertion that the majority of the electorate had voted against Pakatan would be correct if that 51.7% had all belonged to BN. But that's not the case. That 51.7% consists of:

BN (33.9%)
PAS (16.6%)
Others (1.2%).

The Whatsapp analyst had lumped BN with PAS as a single entity competing against Pakatan. That is wrong on two counts. Firstly, PAS had no pact in place with BN. Secondly, PAS was in fact a member of the opposition. Granted, it was not part of Pakatan but it was an opposition party.

It's worth remembering that GE14 was a referendum on BN not on Pakatan. People had a choice: vote for the status quo (keep BN in power) or vote for change (kick BN out).

If you were to add Pakatan's share of 48.3% with PAS's share of 16.6% to derive the opposition's share of the popular vote, you would get 64.9%. That's how much of the electorate wanted to boot BN out.

So the big news is not that Pakatan (sans PAS) had gotten only 48.3% of the popular vote (down from 50.1% in GE13). The big news is that BN had gotten only 33.9% of the popular vote (down from 46.7% in GE13).

Now, going into GE15 (five years from now), it would be correct to lump BN and PAS together because both are now part of the opposition. But that was certainly not the case in GE14.