Here’s a compelling thought ahead of GE13; what if those 3.9 million first-time voters want exactly the same things as everyone else from the next Government? A solid economy, stability, jobs and a good school system.
This is important because, among other things, it’s easy to assume that first time voters are all young, which they aren’t. At GE12, a quarter of those who were eligible to vote didn’t vote, and never had. Many who have now joined the electoral roll are older people voting for the first time, encouraged to register by the landmark voting reforms that they have witnessed in the past year.
It is therefore also wrong to assume that these first time votes are simply pre-occupied with so called ‘youth’ issues, only engage in politics via social media, and go home each evening to watch DAP’s clichéd “Ubah Rocket Style” on Youtube.
On the social media issue, it’s true that the urban young are far better-connected than their parents, which suits Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who dominates both Facebook and Twitter. But a leading academic has warned that the parties should not overstate its influence. Yes, there are 13 million Facebook users in Malaysia, but says Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) political analyst Mohd Baharudin Othman: “Social media only has impact on urbanites, but not in rural areas where voters are more concerned about issues close to them.”
In other words, in rural areas 1Malaysia aid programmes, the success of Felda Global, and yes, the economy, stability, jobs and the school system are just as important. The very same things that concern other, regular voters.
It has already been established that first time voters are the key demographic at GE13, along with undecided Chinese voters. This is in large part because other groups such as Malays and Indians, who abandoned the Pak Lah Government in 2008, have already returned to BN in droves.
But anyone listening to Najib in both his recent televised Conversation with the Prime Minister and his State of The Union address would have noticed that he didn’t try to slice and dice the voting public into small pieces, making specific promises to each group. His target audience was the rakyat as a whole and what matters most to the vast majority of Malaysians. That’s right – a solid economy, stability, jobs and a good school system.
Contrast this with Pakatan Rakyat, which has at every turn tried to define first time voters as some sort of homogenous fraternity that will fall for promises of free university and the abolition of PTPTN without asking: Where will the money come from? After all, first time voters know as well as anyone else that Pakatan’s lavish promises will eventually have to be paid for.
A Merdeka Center survey released in January revealed that at least half of all first time voters are also undecided voters. It also found that they overwhelmingly believe that BN listen to their concerns, which is a vote of confidence in the way the Prime Minister in engages the rakyat.
All the parties are targeting these voters but the warning is clear: try to isolate, patronise or otherwise presume that these voters don’t share the same concerns as the rest of the population, and pay the price at the ballot box. They might be politically inexperienced, but that doesn’t mean that first time voters won’t vote for what’s best for them and their country: a solid economy, stability, jobs and a good school system – the things that count.