New seats: GRS won most with few surprises
Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) won nine out of the 13 new seats which made their debut during the Sabah elections 2020.
This should not come as a surprise as an earlier analysis by Malaysiakini of past voting results for voting districts that were incorporated into these new constituencies gave BN, a GRS coalition member, the advantage in all but six.
Umno won the most, five, of which three - Pantai Dalit, Sungai Manila, and Lamag - was expected.
They also picked up Bengkoka, where voters were equally split between Warisan and Umno during the 2018 elections.
Bengkoka was a contest between Umno, PBS, Upko, and eight other candidates...
Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) won nine out of the 13 new seats which made their debut during the Sabah elections 2020.
This should not come as a surprise as an earlier analysis by Malaysiakini of past voting results for voting districts that were incorporated into these new constituencies gave BN, a GRS coalition member, the advantage in all but six.
Umno won the most, five, of which three - Pantai Dalit, Sungai Manila, and Lamag - was expected.
They also picked up Bengkoka, where voters were equally split between Warisan and Umno during the 2018 elections.
Bengkoka was a contest between Umno, PBS, Upko, and eight other candidates.
Umno's vote-share actually dropped from 40 to 32 percent, which could be attributed to their allies PBS fielding a candidate as well as the remarkable performance of independent candidates Maklin Masiau (14.48 percent) and Mary E Dumpangol @ Aminah Ambrose (9.21 percent).
Maklin is a pastor and local activist in Pitas. He is best known for having 574 books and 419 CDs seized in 2014 because of religious reasons.
Aminah Ambrose was formerly a private secretary to Mustapha Harun - the former governor, third chief minister of Sabah, and former president of United Sabah National Organisation (Usno).
Her husband was also a former Banggi lawmaker.
Umno also won the Tanjung Keramat seat convincingly (51.75 percent vote-share), although the voters in this constituency mostly favoured Warisan in 2018.
Coming in second place was Warisan Plus alliance member Amanah (39.1 percent).
Transfer of support
Of the nine seats won by GRS, Bersatu contributed two, which in effect showed that Umno's support in 2018 can sometimes be transferable to its splinter party.
For instance, in Bandau, the 2018 election indicated that slightly over 50 percent of the electorate in this new constituency had backed the Umno candidate.
This time around, Bersatu's Wetrom Bahanda won the seat with an impressive 69.51 percent of the vote-share.
Wetrom was a former Kota Marudu Umno division head before joining Bersatu.
Bersatu also contributed Pintasan, winning the seat by a sliver (33.31 percent vote-share).
The runner up for the Pintasan contest was Usno's Pandikar Amin Mulia (32.29 percent), a political veteran and known figure in the Kota Belud area, having once been elected as the Usukan lawmaker.
Pandikar also has the distinction of having served as both Sabah legislative assembly speaker and Dewan Rakyat speaker.
Friendly fire? No problem
Star and PBS contributed one each of the new seats for GRS, winning Tulid and Telupid respectively.
Both victories were impressive considering that Star and PBS were also battling their GRS allies in both seats.
Combined, GRS parties won 69.51 percent of the vote in Tulid against 23.45 percent won by the Warisan candidate.
Based on 2018 voting results alone, it would have been expected that BN's PBRS would have an advantage in the Tulid seat. Instead, PBRS trailed Star, but was still ahead of Warisan.
Over at Telupid, the GRS parties won 68.22 percent of the vote against 29.51 percent won by Upko.
Both Tulid and Telupid are located in Sabah's interior, which is populated by the Kadazan Dusun Murut communities.
Warisan expectedly won the new seats of Darau, Limbahau, Segama, and Kukusan.
However, the vote-share for Darau and Kukusan were below 2018 levels, signalling that the party was losing some support in the Kota Kinabalu and Tawau areas.
A notable fact was that Warisan's Kukusan candidate Rina Jainal won the seat with only a 10 vote majority - the smallest for the Sabah 2020 elections.
