Famale voting in Kedah: Candidate, party or what matter?

• Main Authors: Ahmad Zakuan, Ummu Atiyah, Yusof, Rohana, Abdulllah, Mohamad Ainuddin Iskandar Lee
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: JA Political science (General)
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/24681/1/SKTSEWU%202018%20222%20230.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/24681/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Often people neglect the force of female voters in elections. Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in 2016 Presidential election due to the supports of white women since they supported the latter. Earlier, Obama won and became the US President due to 53% out of 55% voters voted for him, and they were women.These two major elections have shown how crucial is women voters, who can determine the President of the country.In the Malaysia context, women represent 51% of the total voters and many are not affiliated to any political party.In the recent 14th general election (GE14), women voters together with the young voters had made their choices resulting in the change of the federal government. Pakatan Harapan (PH) now has become the present government ending 61 years of Barisan Nasional (BN) legacy in the country.This study aims to investigate the dynamics of the female voters in Kedah and Perlis.Among the major inquiries are to see what is or are the main consideration for them to vote, is it the candidate, or party, or is there any other matter that they took into consideration when voting. This study used a quantitative survey, using past literature to build the instrument. Based on the rational choice theory, this study found that, majority of women, irrespective of age, choose a candidate over any other factors, and political party is not a significant factor to the young women but slightly matter to the older women. Beside age, ethnicity also seems to influence their voting behaviour where Indian women are more concern towards issues when casting their votes as compared to the Malay and Chinese counterparts. Marital status too able to explain voting behaviour of the women. Single, divorcee and widower are more likely to opt for issues when voting as compared to married women who chose candidate.These findings have concluded that, the demographic factors really interplay with each other and closely influence the voting behavior of the women.As voters, women can be considered as rational actors since they took their surroundings in making their decisions.They chose what is/are rational to them. Hence, as political parties, they really have to understand the pschye of women , the richness from their diversities really influence their preferences.The former could not simply blanket women as one category but treat them as a unique voter whose interest are diversified. Political parties need to pay closer attention to the women’s concerns in order to secure their votes.Their votes matter since they constitute the number, the number that could change the regime or even bring it down.