Malaysia’s General Election (GE) 2013: An analysis of urban political tsunami

The 2013 General Election is the most intense in the history of general elections in Malaysia and as such regarded as the mother to all the thirteen general elections ever held in this country. In this GE although BN maintained the status quo at the national level by winning 133 parliamentary seats and 275 state seats it experienced a decline in both representative seats. BN also failed to get two-thirds majority in the parliament besides loosing the states of Selangor, Pulau Pinang and Kelantan. Even more interesting, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) comprising PKR, DAP and PAS managed to capture 12 of the 14 state capital parliamentary seats. This phenomenon has been widely known as an urban political’tsunami . This article examines the factors that had influenced the Malaysian urban political ‘tsumani in the last 13th General Elections. Analyses of election data for years 2004, 2008 and 2013 and those of secondary data from various sources showed that the urban political tsunami was due to the increase in the access level of urban voters to political information which was widely available in the alternative media such as facebook, twitter, websites, blogs and SMS in addition to the solid support of Chinese voters as well as overwhelming supports from professionals and young voters. The high cost of urban living regarding which the PR manifesto importantly promised to bring down fuel and car prices and to promote fair and transparent governance had also been influential in ensuring the PR’s victory in the general elections.