Election Commission officials check the ballot papers for tomorrow’s polling in Tenang.
A survey by the Ilham Centre released today revealed that Barisan Nasional (BN) would retain the Tenang seat tomorrow with a majority of around 3,000 votes.
The survey, conducted between January 26 until yesterday, also showed that PAS would not succeed in getting more Chinese support as expected.
“BN is leading PAS by about 4,000 votes and is expected to win about 6,000 to 7,000 votes while PAS would obtain about 4,000 votes,” said the centre’s executive director Muhamad Hisommudin Bakar in a statement today.
“BN is estimated to win 73.1 per cent of the Malay votes, Chinese (48.6 per cent) Indians (50 per cent) and others, 75 per cent,” he added.
PAS won about 50 to 67 per cent of the Chinese votes in Election 2008 and has been planning to increase its win in Chinese areas to about 75 per cent in order to stop BN from winning Tenang by a 5,000-vote majority, a target set by Deputy Prime Minister and the coalition’s election director Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.
Apart from PAS’s failure to make significant inroads among the Chinese voters, Ilham Centre also found out that the Islamist party’s candidate Normala Sudirman is not as popular as BN’s Azahar Ibrahim.
“BN candidate Azahar Ibrahim or better known as Tok Ai was known by 91.4 per cent of the voters, while Normala Sudirman was only known by 79.6 per cent of the respondents,” said Hisommudin.
However, the survey showed that 62.5 per cent of the voters would make their decision tomorrow based on the party.
The survey also concluded that the informal structure of Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition has made it difficult for PAS to win more Malay votes.
“Among the Malay voters, the structure of the Pakatan Rakyat co-operation remains unclear,” said Hisommudin.
“The PAS machinery has to present a real image of a united Pakatan Rakyat to face Barisan Nasional in the next election,” he added.
On the personal attacks against Azahar and Normala, the centre said they would not affect tomorrow’s voting pattern.
In the case of Normala’s refusal to shake hands with men, for example, only 5.6 per cent of the respondents categorised the practice as a weakness while only 8.2 per cent of the respondents said they were affected by Azahar’s alleged involvement in a land scam.
Normala has been criticised by the BN campaign for not shaking hands with men while PAS has claimed Azahar had abused his powers when serving as the Segamat assistant district officer, resulting in an illegal auction of a private land.
A total of 549 voters were interviewed for the survey ahead of the country’s 14th by-election since Election 2008.
