BUKIT MERTAJAM: A PKR survey has projected that less than 68% of voters will turn up to cast their ballots in the Permatang Pauh by-election tomorrow, sparking worries that the coalition could lose the seat, the party’s strategy director Sim Tze Tzin said yesterday.

He said Permatang Pauh could end up like the Teluk Intan by-election last year, when voter turnout was less than 70% and Barisan Nasional (BN) won by some 200-odd votes.

“This is worrying especially because we have some 6,000 outstation voters,” Sim, who is the Bayan Baru Member of Parliament, said at a press conference in Yayasan Aman yesterday.

In the Teluk Intan by-election last year, BN’s Datuk Mah Siew Kong defeated DAP’s Dyana Sofya Mohd Daud by 238 votes.

The Election Commission officially declared the Gerakan president the winner with 20,157 votes against Dyana’s 19,919. There were 550 spoilt votes.

Pakatan Rakyat has repeatedly touted the by-election in Permatang Pauh as an indicator of Putrajaya’s popularity not only among voters in the parliamentary constituency, but the rest of Malaysia too.

PKR president and candidate Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail had previously said the election results would be a referendum on BN and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s policies.

When Sim was asked if he was predicting that PKR would lose its stronghold, he declined to speculate, saying that it could only be determined by the voters.

“The voters must decide if they want to continue the direction that the country is heading towards or change it,” he said.

Sim said the PKR survey was based on a questionnaire conducted via phone calls to 1,000 voters.

He said the sample represented the total 71,000 voters in the parliamentary constituency and also reflected the racial and location breakdown. — The Malaysian Insider

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 6, 2015.