Malaysian general election, 1978

← 1974

8 – 22 July 1978

1982 →

← outgoing members

Members elected →

All 154 seats to the Dewan Rakyat
78 seats needed for a majority

Registered

5,059,689

Turnout

3,596,732 (75.3%)

	First party	Second party	Third party
			PAS
Leader	Hussein Onn	Lim Kit Siang	Asri Muda
Party	Barisan Nasional	DAP	PAS
Leader since	14 January 1976	October 1969	1969
Leader's seat	Sri Gading	Petaling	No seat
Last election	135 seats, 60.7%	9 seats, 18.3%	13 seats (part of Barisan Nasional)
Seats won	131	16	5
Seat change	4	7	8
Popular vote	1,987,907	664,433	537,720
Percentage	57.2%	19.1%	15.5%
Swing	3.5%	0.8%

Prime Minister before election

Hussein Onn
Barisan Nasional

Prime Minister-designate

Hussein Onn
Barisan Nasional

A general election was held between Saturday, 8 July and Saturday, 22 July 1978 for members of the 5th Parliament of Malaysia. Voting took place in all 154 parliamentary constituencies of Malaysia, each electing one Member of Parliament to the Dewan Rakyat, the dominant house of Parliament. State elections also took place in 276 state constituencies in 10 (out of 13, except Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak) states of Malaysia on the same day.

It was Hussein Onn's first election since he became the country's third Prime Minister. His Barisan Nasional Party emerged victorious with 131 of the 154 seats in Parliament. Voter turnout was 75.3%.

As expected, Barisan Nasional comfortably maintained its majority in the Malaysian Parliament and thus, gave the Prime Minister the power to form a government with a free hand. Despite the victory, BN actually lost four seats out of 154 seats to the opposition.

The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) withdrew from BN in the midst of the 1977 Kelantan Emergency over disagreements with UMNO over the running of the state government of Kelantan, which PAS had controlled since the first post-independence general election in 1959. With the support of UMNO, detractors within PAS split with the party and formed the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Front (BERJASA). In the election, PAS lost the control of the state for the first time to the UMNO-BERJASA alliance within BN. Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah has been credited for UMNO's victory in Kelantan.

...
Wikipedia