The EC added that around 41% of voters in Tioman, Pahang have also gone to the polls up to 1pm.

This showed that more than 57,000 people had come out to fulfil their duty as voters in the Padang Serai parliamentary seat and 11,000 for the Tioman state constituency.

There are 132,955 eligible voters in Padang Serai and 28,108 in Tioman.

Voting for the two seats could not be held simultaneously with the Nov 19 general election (GE15) following the deaths of Pakatan Harapan (PH) candidate, M Karupaiya in Padang Serai, and Yunus Ramli of Perikatan Nasional (PN) in Tioman.

Karupaiya, 69, who won the same seat in the 2018 general election (GE14), died on Nov 16, while Yunus, 61, died in the early hours of polling day.

The contest for the Padang Serai seat will see a six-cornered fight involving Sofee Razak of PH, Azman Nasrudin (PN), Hamzah Abd Rahman (Pejuang), C Sivaraj (BN), Bakhri Hashim (Warisan) and independent candidate Ananda AK.

However, both BN and Warisan have since withdrawn from the race and urged their supporters to back Sofee.

Meanwhile, Tioman will witness a five-cornered fight between Nor Idayu Hashim (PH), Johari Hussain (BN), Osman A Bakar (Pejuang), Fadzli Ramly (PH) and independent candidate Sulaiman Bakar.

In the Pahang state seat, however, PH agreed to pull its candidate out, so that votes are not split between PH and BN.