Participation of young voters in Sabah State Election 2013: N19 Kepayan constituency / Aaron W. Edmund and Mohd Jefri Ianshah Hanafiah

The 13th Malaysian General Election has been held on May 5 2013, simultaneously with the state election for all thirteen states except for Sarawak. Nowadays, the issues of young voter participation in the election have shown that this age of group is starting to realized and actively involving in politics. In fact the young voter is the key in deciding the result of election as they also represent most of voter in Malaysia and this trends probably would keep increase in the next coming election. The 2013 election also reflected the coming age of the young people where the government and the opposition has start to focus to the young voter because they are the main role in deciding Malaysia political landscape in the future. Furthermore there are also growing body of literature that been discussed towards the level and movement of young voter's participation and as well as several past research that discusses how would this age of group will affect the election result. This paper provides empirical evidence based on the finding on the positive correlation between the young voter's participation in the State election with related to the several factors that associated with young voters' participation. The questionnaire was prepared for 100 respondents and only 97 returned from the electoral area N.19 Kepayan Constituency. The results of the analysis indicate that the young voter's participation in the N.19 Kepayan Constituency was in the moderate level of participation.