UMNO vice president Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said the party is seeing a reduction in the number of loyal voters, which has not increased while the electoral roll increases every six months.
He said new voters preferred not to join any political party but are playing a big part in elections.
“It’s not like before.. our loyal voter base is shrinking. The demographics show that younger voters make up 60% in every area.
“For instance, in Pasir Gudang, we have 20,000 UMNO members but there are 200,000 registered voters. This will likely soon increase to 250,000, but the number of UMNO members will remain at 20,000.
“Now, many do not belong to any party… they support whatever brings about benefits (for them).
“(So), UMNO needs to ensure that we are seen and that our presence is felt. We need to think carefully about how we approach things… we need to ensure that our stand is attractive to these new voters,” he said.
In 2022, Member of the Supreme Working Council of UMNO Datuk Seri Ahmad Maslan said the party has a total of 3,391,236 members from its 22,274 branches and 191 divisions nationwide as of March 15, 2022.
He said this makes UMNO the largest political party with the highest number of members in Malaysia.
He also said Sabah has the highest membership with 594,631, followed by Johor (452,642), Selangor (426,109), and Kedah with 300,564 members.
However, Khaled said UMNO needs to employ the right approach in order to ensure that this category of voters feels the party’s presence in the community.
He was speaking to reporters after the Johor chapter of the Council of Former Elected Representatives (Mubarak) and UMNO veterans Hari Raya open house yesterday.
He also said there was no one party in the country that could work alone after the 15th General Election (GE15).
Just like Barisan Nasional (BN), Pakatan Harapan is also a coalition of parties with the PKR and DAP because, he said, they did not want to work alone.
“If you want to stand alone in a general election, there’s no problem, but you won’t be able to form the government by yourself, because the demographics right now in terms of the composition of the people is varied… there is no absolute majority for any race.
“In today’s political context, there is no possibility of a political party working in silo. So, we must think about who we should work with to ensure that Umno and BN will continue to exist,” he said. – May 5, 2024
