LETTER | When the numbers don’t add up

LETTER | Several news portals today reported that BN won the Johor polls with 66.25 percent of the popular vote. 

My understanding of the percentage of popular vote refers to the total votes received by a particular party over the total number of votes cast. 

This understanding was further defined in the article as "Popular vote refers to the number of votes won by each party or its coalition."

The numbers didn’t quite seem to add up and so I visited the Election Commission (EC) website to have a look. 

I then tabulated all the results for each of the 56 seats for my own analysis.  For ease of calculation, please note that I grouped together Pakatan Harapan with PKR.

Based on the results from the EC website, BN only obtained 43 percent of the popular vote and not 66.25 percent as published by the various news portals. 

The total numbers published are also erroneous as my analysis shows that BN received a total of 599,753 votes against 445,085 that was reported. Table 1 below shows the total votes received for all parties while Chart 1 and Chart 2 show the data in graphical format for ease of reference.

The second bit that doesn’t seem to add up is that EC reported total voter turnout as 1,426,573. 

However, adding up the results from the EC website shows the total to be 1,391,162 - a shortfall of 35,411 votes. 

Perhaps the EC results page hasn’t been completely updated yet? And if not, then why?

Giving all those 35,000 votes to BN still means that they only get 45 percent of the popular vote.  So something is really wrong with the numbers.

Cause for concern

This begets several questions.  Firstly, it appears that the news article came from Bernama which is cause for concern. 

Bernama is the National News Agency and if their reports are presenting inaccurate data, this is certainly troubling. 

The next question is how did so many news portals simply rehash the article without even looking at the numbers and be triggered that the data could not be right? 

Didn't the fact that Muda's numbers showed as 22,884 when that was their total votes for the Puteri Wangsa seat not set off alarm bells? 

Didn’t the fact that the total number of votes does not seem to tally raise any concerns? 

Do news portals simply rehash whatever is given to them without checking?

On further analysis, it appears that the data used was the winning votes meaning votes were only tabulated for winning seats. 

This explains why Muda's “popular vote” is reported as 22,884 - the only seat they won.  This is a completely inaccurate statistical analysis and in no way reflects the popular vote.

More concerning is how Bernama could have let this through.  Did no one check the numbers? 

Was this an honest mistake by someone that doesn’t fully understand what "popular vote" means or was it a deliberate attempt to fool the rakyat? 

Is this not fake news?  The fact that it has been published by so many news portals makes you all complicit in this.

Perhaps I am the one that doesn’t understand statistics and if that's the case then I apologise unreservedly. 

I do think, however, that I am correct in this instance.  So please, correct the mistake and give the rakyat the true picture.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.