THE voters in Johor will cast their vote for the state elections on the 11th of July 2026. It is almost a foregone conclusion that the Barisan Nasional (BN) will maintain control of the state assembly.
The only question is, how many seats will BN win and what implications will this have on the Negeri Sembilan polls which will take place on Aug 1, 2026 and how may the results in both state elections affect the stability of the federal government and the calling of the 16th general elections?
I have done an early projection of three different scenarios with different degrees of likelihood for the Johor state election results. The scenarios are one which is more favourable to BN (pro-BN), one which is more favourable to PN (pro-PN) and one which is more favourable to PH (pro-PH). The assumptions underlying each scenario are summarised in Figure 1 below.
The reason why the Chinese and Indian support for PH drops by 20% and 30% respectively in Scenario 3, which is the pro-PH scenario, is that support for PH was already at its maximum in the 15th general election (GE15) among the Chinese and Indian voters. The support for PH can only go down and the pro-PH scenario estimates a lower decrease in its support among Chinese and Indian voters.
It is important to note that my projections are based on the vote share won by BN, PH and PN in the 2022 general election (GE15), which are more favourable to PH, and not the 2022 state elections, which are more favourable to BN. Based on the 2022 general election, PH would have won 31 state seats with 43% of the popular vote compared to just 13 state seats with 26.4% of the popular vote.
Before I show the results of the projections, the following caveats need to be made:
(i) Projections made before nominations day on the June 27, 2026;
(ii) Does not take into account dynamics of individual state seats concerning individual candidate;
(iii) Does not take into account the breakdown in cooperation between PAS and Bersatu;
(iv) Does not take into account the impact of Bersama, especially on PH support;
(v) Does not take into account differences in turnout according to race.
With these caveats out of the way, the results of my projections are shown in Figure 3 below.
In the pro-BN scenario, which I expect to be the most likely scenario, with more than 50% chance of happening, BN will win 53 out of 56 state seats with PH taking the remaining three seats. In the pro-PN scenario, which is not likely (and even less likely after the “divorce” between PAS and Bersatu), PN will win 25 state seats compared to 21 for BN with PH taking 10 seats. In this scenario, BN will most likely form the state government with PN, leaving PH in the opposition. In the pro-PH scenario, BN will still win a comfortable majority of 39 state seats with PH taking 14 and PN taking three.
Popular social media personality, Eric See-To/Lim Sian See, shared the results of the pro-BN Scenario 1 on this Facebook page without showing Scenarios 2 and 3.
After almost one week of campaigning, I think the chances of the pro-BN scenario taking place has increase from more than 50% to more than 60% and the chances of the pro-PN scenario taking place has decreased to below 10% with the pro-PH scenario not too far behind.
My reasons are as follows:
(i) PH does not have a cohesive campaign narrative other than attacking the popular caretaker Johor Menteri Besar (MB) Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi.
(ii) PH has not named an MB candidate yet
(iii) Many of the top PH leaders are not even contesting in any of the state seats leaving a vacuum in terms of senior leadership guiding and shaping the campaign narrative.
(iv) PH has not yet announced its manifesto while BN announced its manifesto the day after nominations day. In any case, even if PH announces its manifesto this weekend, there will not be enough time to socialise the manifesto even among PH’s own candidates, much less the larger electorate in Johor.
(v) PH has created more problems for itself during the campaign with Nga Kor Ming’s remarks to a Chinese newspaper that he would resign from Cabinet if BN in Johor won big and if this leads to former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak being released from jail coupled with Marina Ibrahim’s social media posting alleging that a senior DAP leader asked her, in private, to prepare for Najib to be released from jail even as he was taking a public position against Najib’s release.
The implications of a dominant performance by the BN, including MCA winning more state seats in Johor compared to the DAP, will have positive spillover effects for the BN in the Negeri Sembilan state elections and possibly expedite the dissolution of Parliament later this year. I will come up with a more thorough analysis of the Johor state election results after July 11, 2026.
Dr Ong Kian Ming is adjunct professor at Taylor’s University.
Find out all you need to know about 2026 Johor Elections here.