Rompin warning bell

My sister blogger Helen Ang came out with it first,

Alamat keputusan Rompin: PRU14 nanti orang pro-kerajaan akan pilih untuk duduk di rumah juga

excerpts:

By-election

• Hasan Arifin (Umno) got  23,796 votes
• Nazri Ahmad (PAS) got  14,901 votes

GE13

• Jamaluddin Jarjis (Umno) got  30,040 votes
• Nuridah Mohd Salleh (PAS) got  14,926 votes

In the interval of exactly two years between 5 May 2013 (13th general election) and 5 May 2015 (yesterday), Umno lost 6,244 votes. PAS only lost 25 votes.

Turnout dropped drastically

• GE13 : 85.9%
• By-election : 73%

Since there is no change in the level of support for PAS, then the logical conclusion is that it is the BN voters who were not motivated to come out to vote.

My analysis of the Rompin by-election results was actually the same as Helen's.

So, I think I better not waste my time writing mine.

You all can read Helen's if you want to know what I think about the BN's reduced majority in Rompin from over 15,000 to less than 9,000.

Well, at least it's not as bad as the prediction of my friend who was campaigning for BN in Rompin the other day.

He had said that the majority could be slashed to between 5,000 and 6,000.

You can read it here:
Rompin and a bit of Wesak Day love

Whatever it is, it should still be remembered that Rompin is a BN stronghold with 14 Felda settlements, which were traditionally vote banks of the ruling coalition.

A loss of over 6,000 votes in such a constituency should warned BN that something was not right.

It should also be noted that the outcome of the Rompin by-election was a reversal of a positive trend for BN in the series of nine by-elections since the 2013 general elections (GE13).

In the last parliamentary by-election before Rompin, BN candidate D Mah Siew Keong of Gerakan sprang a surprise in Teluk Intan in May last year by beating DAP's Dyana Sofya by reversing a seven percent majority votes won by the opposition party in GE13.

For details:
Teluk Intan by-election,

BN, or to be precise Umno had even done well in its previous encounters with Pas such as the Pengkalan Kubor state by-election in September last year when its candidate  Mat Razi Mat Ali defeated Pas' Wan Rosdi Wan Ibrahim by improving the coalition's majority by 5.57 per cent.

For details:
Pengkalan Kubor by-election

So, what happened since then?

TS Muhyiddin Yassin as BN's "by-election director-general" had said there will be a post-mortem on the Rompin by-election results. Hopefully the effort will yield good response instead of just being swept under the carpet.

Now, if the outcome of the soon to be held Permatang Pauh by-election doesn't favor BN too, then the coalition must do something urgent to arrest what could be a declining support for them.

Otherwise, the next general election, to be held less than three years from now can be quite disastrous for the ruling coalition.