The Malaysian Election Corpus (MECo): Federal and State-Level Election Results from 1955 to 2025

Abstract

Empirical research and public knowledge on Malaysia's elections have long been constrained by a lack of high-quality open data, particularly in the absence of a Freedom of Information framework. This paper introduces the Malaysian Election Corpus (MECo), an open-access panel database covering all federal and state general elections since 1955, as well as by-elections since 2008. MECo includes candidate- and constituency-level data for 9,704 electoral contests across seven decades, standardised with unique identifiers for candidates, parties, and coalitions. The database also provides summary statistics for each contest (electorate size, voter turnout, majority size, rejected ballots, unreturned ballots), key demographic data for candidates (age, gender, ethnicity), and lineage data for political parties. MECo is the most well-curated open database on Malaysian elections to date, and will unlock new opportunities for research, data journalism, and civic engagement.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Federal and state general election years
• Figure 2: Federal election coverage (number of seats)
• Figure 3: State election coverage (number of seats)
• Figure 4: By-election coverage (number of elections)
• Figure 5: Error rate in general election years