The electoral geography of Kuala Lumpur’s Titiwangsa parliamentary constituency 1955-2013: An analysis

The Titiwangsa Parliamentary constituency of Kuala Lumpur has an interesting ethnic mix. Its electoral areas of interest includes cities, towns, land plots of early Malay and Chinese settlers, traditional Malay and Chinese villages, modern Malay and Chinese housing estates , and low cost common public housings. Against this ethnic backdrop the purpose of this article is to analyze the factors influencing the election results from 1955 to 2013, in particular, the winning factors and the voting patterns in the constituency. Based on the general election report data sheet for 1982-2013 and score sheets for the 1995 to 2013 released by the Election Commission (EC) and secondary research papers and journal articles, it was found that the BN’s wins prior to 2008 were due to heterogeneous ethnic composition as well as prevailing local and national issues. PAS’ victory with a majority of 1972 votes in the general election of 2008 was due to the rather unexpected political tsunami whereby urban Malays, and Chinese and Indians came out in droves to lend their support to the fumdamentalist Islamic and traditionally Malay dominated PAS. BN, nevertheless, recaptured the area in the 2013 election with a majority of 866 votes with the support of middle-income urban Malays of Kampung Baru, Keramat and Kampung Pandan, and the arguably less transparent postal and early votes, while PAS continued to received support from Chinese and Indian urbanites and Malay professionals.