Malaysia has apparently started an international political trend, and America is only just catching up.
At least, that is the interpretation being drawn from the United States midterm elections, where the Democratic Party recorded significant victories, with opposition leader Hamzah Zainudin drawing parallels between the American results and the political momentum of Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) in Malaysia.
The comparison presents an interesting political narrative. However, the similarities become less convincing when the discussion moves beyond electoral colours and into ideology.
In the United States, the Democratic Party's victories in the November 3 midterm elections reflected a broader rejection of President Donald Trump's administration, with economic concerns, rising living costs and dissatisfaction with federal policies among the issues shaping voter sentiment.
The term “blue wave” has therefore become a shorthand for Democratic electoral momentum, rather than a reference to a particular political ideology shared by every candidate who benefited from the result.
In Malaysia, however, the same colour is being used to describe the electoral cooperation between BN and PN, which collectively secured 25 of the 36 seats in the Negeri Sembilan state election.
Hamzah has presented this development as the beginning of a wider political shift, suggesting that the American results demonstrate how governments can lose public support when they fail to address people's concerns.
The cost of living, food security and energy supply are legitimate issues for comparison.
Voter dissatisfaction with economic conditions can influence electoral outcomes regardless of the country or political party involved.
But that is where the comparison should be examined more carefully.
The Democratic Party is a broad political coalition encompassing centrist and progressive factions, with parts of its platform advocating stronger social protections, universal healthcare and greater economic equality.
BN and PN, meanwhile, have their own distinct political identities, histories and ideological positions. Their cooperation in Negeri Sembilan is primarily an electoral arrangement between Malaysian political coalitions, rather than an equivalent of the Democratic Party's political platform.
Even within Malaysia, the comparison becomes rather awkward when ideological similarities are considered.
DAP, a component party of Pakatan Harapan, identifies itself as a social democratic party, with principles including social justice, equal opportunity, workers' rights and freedom of religion.
Its emblem, incidentally, features a red rocket.
If political comparisons are going to be made based on ideological positions rather than colours, Malaysia's red could arguably have more in common with America's blue than the BN-PN alliance does.
That does not make DAP and the entire Democratic Party interchangeable.
Their political environments, constituencies and policy priorities remain different.
However, it demonstrates why using electoral colours as evidence of ideological similarity is a rather convenient way of conducting political analysis.
The more important question is whether the two electoral developments share meaningful political conditions.
In both countries, dissatisfaction with the incumbent government and concerns over economic conditions have become part of the political conversation.
Yet the extent to which these factors influenced voters, and the political alternatives they chose, must be examined within their respective national contexts.
For Malaysia, BN-PN's performance in Negeri Sembilan does not automatically establish that the same electoral momentum will carry into Melaka.
State-level political dynamics, candidate selection, local concerns and voter preferences will ultimately determine the outcome.
Drawing lessons from the American elections is reasonable.
Treating the results as confirmation of a Malaysian political movement simply because both happen to be called a blue wave is another matter.
Political colours may travel easily across borders, but political ideologies do not follow the same rules.
If the intention is to understand why voters are turning against their governments, perhaps the more useful exercise would be to examine what those voters actually want, rather than deciding which political colour gets to claim the wave.