BN only gets 51% of the total number of votes cast -- and still gets 140 out of 222 seats in Parliament..

Some is this is really crap - how can you calculate popular vote of UMNO and MCA and MIC - they all are part of the one Barisan Nasional - and people voted for the coalition irrespective of whether the candidate standing was from MCA, UMNO, MIC, Gerakan, PPP or one the many other component parties of the BN.

In the same way, the vote was for the Opposition - the Barisan Alternative - not for PAS, PKR or DAP individually --- irrespective of whether it was a PKR or DAP or PAS candidate that was standing...

I really do not understand the INTENTION of the writer and/or the publication - for it would only cause 'problems' between members of the BN or the BA..

The IMPORTANT FACT is this the BN only got 51.3% of the popular vote in the 2008 elections - compared to the 63.4%


Tuesday March 11, 2008
MYT 3:04:32 PM

BN loses 12 percentage points in popular vote

By SHAILA KOSHY

KUALA LUMPUR: The popular vote for the Barisan Nasional dropped around 12 percentage points to 51% this election, but lead party Umno still drew the lion's share of the popular votes for both parliamentary and state seats.

Of the parties drawing the biggest of the popular votes in Parliament, Umno leads at 35.51% (2,462,749) followed by PAS (21.65% - 1,501,800), PKR (13.15% - 911,761) DAP (12.76% - 884,941) and MCA (9.14% - 633,985).

In the states, it was almost the same order with Umno leading at 29.99% (2,371,867) followed by PKR (18.6% - 1,471,150), PAS (14.75% - 1,166,918), DAP (14.01% - 1,107,960) and MCA (10.74% - 849,108).

However, the statistics show that Umno, PAS and PKR have greater popularity in Parliament while the DAP and MCA had greater popularity in the states.

In terms of actual votes, those voting for the opposition increased by over one million and that for the Barisan dropped by between 360,000 and 396,000.

This election, the popular vote for Barisan was biggest in Johor (15% - 613,813) and Selangor (12.8% - 522,091). The opposition scored big in Selangor (17.09% - 656,347) and Perak (11.74% - 450,929).

In the state election, the popular vote for Barisan dropped 12.5 percentage points from 63.8% in 2004 to 51.3% this time. In terms of votes, they lost 395,152 votes while the opposition gained 1,138,426 votes.

In the four "new" states that Barisan lost - Kedah, Penang, Perak and Selangor - the decrease in popular votes for the MCA, Gerakan, MIC and PPP was less than that for Umno, which ranged from two percentage points in Perak and Selangor to five percentage points in Kedah and seven in Penang.

In the distribution of popular votes within the DAP-PAS-PKR loose coalition in those four states, the DAP topped the list in Penang (54.62%0 and Perak (42.42%) while PAS led them in Kedah (69.89%) and PKR in Selangor (35.93%).

Although those voting for PAS in Kedah increased by 15% (32,792), its popular votes decreased 12.6 percentage points this time.

As for PKR, those voting for the party almost doubled from when it was known as Parti Keadilan in 2004. However, its popular vote dropped marginally by a 1.2 percentage points in Selangor.