Income Inequality and Voting Outcome of the Malaysian 12th General Election

• Main Author: Sakinah, Husain
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: HB Economic Theory; JF Political institutions (General)
• Online Access: http://etd.uum.edu.my/3752/1/s89039.pdf; http://etd.uum.edu.my/3752/; http://lintas.uum.edu.my:8080/elmu/index.jsp?module=webopac-l&action=fullDisplayRetriever.jsp&szMaterialNo=0000774822

The ruling coalition National Front had ruled our nation uninterruptedly since Malaysia gained independence in 1957. But recently, the National Front experienced a major setback in 12th General Election which they lost control the States of Kedah, Pulau Pinang, Perak, Selangor as well as Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur. Indeed they failed to wrest the control of Kelantan from Opposition. The argument advanced in this study is that, the key for understanding the poor performance of National Front in the Malaysian 12th General Election is the widening of income inequality in the country and that the tolerance to inequality in the society has declined-the Hirschman’s Tunnel Effect. Besides, another observation is that Malaysian multiethnic society has been so long dominated by deep ethnic and religious and cleavages but in the 12th General Election, electorate crossed the ethnic and religious boundary. This is despite the fact that the economy is growing quite rapid and poverty has been declining significantly. The method being used in this research is descriptive analysis and data were being gathered from library materials, journals as well as from the Malaysians government official publications. From this research, we can conclude that income inequality is the key factor of the declining support towards National Front in the 12th General Election which voters had cross their ethnics and religious boundaries.