PETALING JAYA: In every election, the data tells the story – the wins, the losses and the voting trends.

Once the Election Commission (EC) completes tabulating the results, political parties and analysts make a beeline to buy the election score sheet, which can span up to 20,000 pages.

They would meticulously comb through the mountain of figures to find out what they did right in winning the seat, as well as what they did wrong in losing it.

The numbers also give an important indication of what to expect in the upcoming polls.

For the past eight months, a team of four from The Star pored through figures from more than 7,000 polling districts in parliament constituencies across the country for the 15th General Election (GE15) in 2022.

The team also studied the voting figures from the six state elections last year, comprising Kedah, Penang, Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Terengganu and Kelantan.

Each district has a different number of voting streams, ranging from a mere one voting stream in Besut, Terengganu, to 22 streams in Damansara, Selangor, which is the parliament seat with the most voters.

In total, the team went through the results of more than 38,000 voting streams in GE15 and over 17,000 voting streams in the six state elections last year.

Raw data from the score sheet confirmed what the public already knew – such as that urban votes generally went to Pakatan Harapan and that the majority of rural folks threw their support behind Perikatan Nasional.

But there were curveballs as well. Data from the EC score sheet indicated that older voters – those usually allocated to streams 1 and 2 and who are traditionally the vote bank for Barisan Nasional – had given their support to Pakatan Harapan candidates instead.Over the next three days, The Star will present a series of consecutive reports detailing the information that the data revealed, focusing on the Malay, non-Malay and youth votes.

The reports will also examine whether Pahang and Perak might have fallen to the Opposition had they participated in the six state elections last year.

Political analyst Dr Mazlan Ali described the score sheet as a foundation for how political coalitions shape their strategies and direction ahead of an election.

“The score sheet is also very important if we want to conduct a post-mortem after the polls,” he added.

Mazlan agreed that what The Star did in deciphering the voting results is important because it gives insight to how Malaysians, as a society, make its political decisions and how issues influence their voting decision.

He said while the score sheet serves as a valuable tool for political parties to map out their strategies, its accuracy is limited due to the complexity of today’s voters.“The score sheet is also a useful reference for political parties to chart their respective strategies, but it is not 100% accurate because voters now are very complicated.

“Many are influenced by what is said in social media, and they can even change their mind at the very last minute at the ballot box,” added Mazlan.

Watch this space as The Star rolls out its exclusive reports starting on the second anniversary of GE15 tomorrow.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2024/11/18/cracking-the-election-code