INTERVIEW | On Dec 15 last year, the lowering of the voting age to 18 years old and the Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) system came into effect.

This brought the expectation of a “youth tsunami” that would lead Malaysia away from the racialism of parties such as Umno and towards multi-racial parties like PKR.

However, there is also a possibility that youths may follow previous generations in supporting mono-ethnic/mono-religious parties like Umno and PAS.

Despite the overall spike in youth voters, Election Commission (EC) data showed that voters aged between 18 and 20 only represented less than 5 percent of all voters.

The Johor snap polls earlier this year was the first litmus test for this hypothesis.

In its aftermath emerged a strengthened Perikatan Nasional (PN) among youth voters...