©The
Sunday Star (Used by permission)
Compiled by Soo Ewe Jin and Rashvinjeet S. Bedi
Big turnout
There were a total of 8,109,134 votes for 214 parliament seats at stake Election Day. Eligible voters according to the Election Commission stood at 10,516,256.
322,461 spoilt votes
175,680 voters did not want either BN or the opposition in parliament while in the state seats there were 146,781 spoilt votes. The highest number of spoilt votes at the parliamentary level was for the Kapar seat at 3,064. At the state level, the highest number of spoilt votes was for Bukit Selambau with 1,694.
Only 19 votes
Yusof Nasir who stood in the state constituency of Sukau in Sabah managed only 19 votes, the least in any seat. The seat was comfortably won by the BN's Saddi Abdu Rahman who had 3,278 votes, a majority of 2,107 votes over the other independent candidate Ahdah Sulaiman who polled 1,171 votes. Five other independent candidates for that seat also did just as badly with their votes ranging from 41 to 86.
51–vote majority
The battle for the Sarikei parliament seat in Sarawak was the most evenly matched, with the winner Ding Kuong Hiing (BN–SUPP) polling 10,588 votes to edge out Wong Hua Seh (DAP) by a mere 51 votes, the lowest majority at the parliamentary level. This is the same seat where the candidate who polled the least number of votes was independent candidate Ngu Tieng Hai who stood in the constituency of Sarikei in Sarawak. He only gathered 105 votes, which is not too far off from fellow independent candidates Lau Kieng Chai (116) and Kung Chin Chin (545). The closest call at the state level was for the Perak seat of Pengkalan Baharu where BN's Hamdi Abu Bakar (5,375) edged out PAS' Abu Bakar Hussain (5,361), a mere 14 votes.
Big win
The biggest margin of victory at the parliamentary level was for the Seputeh seat where the DAP's Teresa Kok beat the BN's Carol Chew by 36,492 votes. She polled 47,230 against her opponent's 10,738. For state seats, the biggest margin of victory was in Damansara Utama where the DAP's Dr Cheah Wing Yin polled 24,881 against the BN's Victor Gu (9,526), a margin of 15,355.
Deposits gone
In total, 40 candidates lost their deposits (RM10,000) in the quest to become MPs, mainly from Sabah and Sarawak. (Candidates must get at least 1/8 of votes to get back their deposits) The 89–year–old candidate, Maimun Yusuf who grabbed the headlines for being the oldest candidate (contesting in Kuala Terengganu) in this election also lost her deposit when she managed to garner only 685 votes. If it is any consolation, she certainly was the darling of the press and garnered the most page views on Star Online everytime a story was written about her, not forgetting the media attention worldwide. At the state level, 89 candidates lost their RM5,000 deposit, with Sabah having the most casualties at 69.