This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 6, 2026 - July 12, 2026

AS Johor gets ready for a snap state election next Saturday, July 11, the question that waits to be answered is: Will the federal government survive if Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition fares badly in the contest?

The 16th state election, which was not due until June next year, is seen as a pre-emptive strike by Umno, which leads the state government, to strengthen its hand in the federal power equation, where it is a junior partner in Anwar’s unity government.

Caretaker Menteri Besar Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi, 47, who is riding a wave of popular appeal, has pushed the reset button at a strategic moment, taking credit for the state economy coming alive with modern infrastructure works being rolled out, the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ) project showing momentum and a wave of data centre investments flowing in.

In May, Onn sent shockwaves through the federal unity government when he announced that Umno would contest all seats in the next state election, raising question over the unity among the coalitions that form the federal government.

At the time of dissolution of the Johor state assembly on June 1, Onn’s Umno party was in a commanding position, with 33 seats, and held a supermajority of 40 seats as the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in the 56-seat legislative assembly. The PH coalition in the state held 12 seats, anchored by 10 under the Democratic Action Party (DAP), with Anwar’s People’s Justice Party (PKR) and Amanah holding one seat each.

Given Umno’s strength in Johor, due to historical ties as the party was founded in the state, Onn’s stated reason for fresh polls, namely “to ensure a strong and stable government” is calculated to position Umno for a national revival in its next general assembly in August.

Its timing is also opportune in the light of fractious relations among its rivals for the Malay voter base. The erstwhile coalition of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and Bersatu, Perikatan Nasional (PN), which became the federal opposition after the 15th general election (GE15), fell apart in early June. Earlier, Anwar’s PKR had suffered a serious bloodletting when his vocal deputy Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli left the party along with another young leader Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, with six other of its reformist MPs showing them support.

Exploring the multiple motivations that may move Johor’s voters, political analyst Prof Datuk Dr Sivamurugan Pandian says: “The final result may not be explained by a single wave. Instead, it may reflect a mosaic of voter choices where candidate, party, alliance and performance each carry different weights depending on the constituency and voter segment.

“This would make the Johor election an important indicator of how increasingly sophisticated and differentiated Malaysian voting behaviour has become ahead of GE16.

“Urban voters may prioritise governance and policy. Semi-urban voters may focus on candidates and local development. Rural voters may weigh party machinery, local networks and familiarity.

“Younger voters may be more influenced by issues, leadership style and digital campaigning than by traditional party loyalties,” says Sivamurugan, who is professor of political sociology at Universiti Sains Malaysia.

To gauge the voters’ mood in Johor, The Edge covered the campaign trail from June 27 to July 3, spanning the state’s northern towns like Jementah and Tangkak and southern ones like Stulang and Kota Iskandar.

Johor is often touted as a “mini-Malaysia” in terms of the ethnic composition of its constituencies, with a number of seats having a dominant presence of minorities, especially the Chinese.

Nevertheless, there are no seats with a dominant Chinese or Malay population in the state’s southern conurbation. Notably, the state seat of Larkin, in the north of Johor Bahru (JB) city, where Malay voters make up 63.2% of the electorate, is at the top end of the scale.

Neither are Chinese voters overly dominant in the urban seats in the JB metropolitan region. Skudai, under the Iskandar Puteri parliamentary seat to the northwest of JB, has the highest proportion of Chinese voters at slightly more than 60%.

For the people of all communities in the southern metropolitan region, the common issues that unite them are the high cost of living, high property prices and lack of affordable housing, traffic congestion and dearth of good job opportunities.

This is in contrast to the official discourse, which focuses on Johor’s success in attracting investments over the past four years.

In 2025, the state emerged as the largest recipient of investments, with total approved investments reaching RM110.03 billion, according to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority.

However, PH leaders claim that the investments are a result of the federal government’s efforts to promote Johor as an investment destination through the Iskandar Malaysia region and JS-SEZ initiatives.

If southern Johor is defined by cranes, construction sites and billion-ringgit investment announcements, the state’s northern belt tells a different story.

While politicians in JB have been touting rapid urban growth to be driven by the JS-SEZ and the Rapid Transit System (RTS) Link that will build a synergy with Singapore’s economy, the economic conversation further north remains rooted in far more traditional concerns.

Small businesses, agriculture and local services continue to underpin the economy in towns such as Yong Peng, Tangkak and Pagoh.

Here, residents speak less about traffic congestion or soaring property prices — common gripes in the south — and more about the lack of quality jobs and the steady migration of young people to larger cities.

“The development in central and northern Johor has been slow. We want a state government for the whole of Johor, not just a Johor Bahru state government,” Tangkak PH candidate Ee Chin Li told The Edge.

It is not that northern Johor lacks major development projects.

In Pagoh, the Bandar Universiti Pagoh township development includes an 850-acre industrial and entrepreneurship park with an estimated gross development value of RM1.1 billion.

In nearby Muar, the Tanjung Agas Industrial Area, global semiconductor manufacturer STMicroelectronics has established a manufacturing facility.

Yet many point out that these investments have yet to generate the wider economic spillovers seen in southern Johor.

“Tangkak has tremendous potential because of its strategic location,” Ee said. “It is only about 180km from JB and around 160km from Kuala Lumpur, with direct access to the North-South Expressway.”

He believes greater investment in the district’s leafy vegetable farming and durian industries could create new businesses, attract downstream investment and generate more employment opportunities.

That hope is perhaps best illustrated in Yong Peng, better known among traders than tourists as one of Johor’s largest durian collection and export hubs.

But the town has also become a casualty of Malaysia’s nationwide durian glut, which has sent prices tumbling as supply outpaces demand.

Local growers say the problem is not simply producing more durians, but finding ways to create more value from them.

“We hope the government can help develop more downstream industries for the durian sector, such as frozen pulp, desserts and other value-added products, to absorb the oversupply,” said a durian planter in Yong Peng.

For many in northern Johor, the issue is not the absence of development. It is whether growth can spread beyond the state’s southern corridor and create opportunities closer to home.

In Puteri Wangsa, where PKR’s Dr Maszlee Malik is contesting, the seat is becoming a barometer of PH’s popularity in the state. Maszlee, who was Minister of Education in Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s cabinet during the latter’s second tenure as prime minister, is arguably the highest profile PH candidate in the state.

Maszlee has been actively campaigning in Puteri Wangsa since nomination day on June 27. He reports that the reception he has received has been good, and that it is just a matter of urging them to come out and vote.

“We really need a high turnout,” says Maszlee, when met at a restaurant in Taman Desa Tebrau, in the Puteri Wangsa state seat. “If we don’t get a high turnout, it is going to be tough.”

The seat is one that PH is aiming to regain, after allowing Muda to stand there in the 2022 state election. Muda’s president Amira Aisya Abdul Aziz won the seat with a margin of 13.44%, the first state seat for the party.

This time round, the party is fielding Rashifa Aljunied in Puteri Wangsa, banking on her activism in the area especially in helping to alleviate cost of living pressures among needy residents there.

However, political scientist Dr Wong Chin Huat opines that if Muda can secure Puteri Wangsa with PH fielding a big name like Maszlee, it would be a miracle for Muda and a catastrophe for PH.

High turnout will reduce BN’s chances of winning a supermajority in Johor, adds Wong, a professor at Sunway University. However, there isn’t a great “wave” sweeping the state among the voters, unlike in the GE11 in 2004, he says.

“Then it was a swing from both Malays and non-Malays [to BN]. From 2008 to 2022, it has been largely a three-way split in the peninsula. Nothing uniform.

“[The] 2023 [state election] saw two trends, towards PN among the Malays, towards PH-BN among the non-Malays. This round, it might be more split ... BN-PAS, PH, Bersama, Bersatu,” says Wong.

Even if the smaller parties like Bersama and the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia [Bersatu]) do badly, it would still be two divergent groups for BN-PAS and PH, says the political analyst.

This could mean a fractured electoral result that would inadvertently favour the first candidate who passed the post, just like in 2022. In the Johor state election in 2022, BN won with total votes of less than 50% in 19 of the total 40 seats it secured.

These are Kemelah, Tenang, Bukit Pasir, Gambir, Serom, Bukit Naning, Sungai Balang, Semerah, Parit Yaani, Senggarang, Rengit, Mahkota, Tenggaroh, Tiram, Permas, Larkin, Kempas, Kota Iskandar and Bukit Permai.

Had BN lost in those seats, they would have been unable to form a single coalition government in Johor and might have needed to work with either PN or PH back then to form a government.

Already, some BN leaders are claiming that the coalition enters the election as an “underdog”, urging voters to come out and vote for them, lest they might lose the majority in the state’s assembly.

But this was dismissed by political commentators and BN’s opponents PH as merely a scare tactic on their voters who might think that the coalition could lose if they did not come out and vote in droves.

“I am surprised that Umno fears that,” says Wong. “They could have presented themselves as the multiethnic stable ruling parties that would do better than both PH (with the splintering of Rafizi’s new vehicle, Bersama, from it) and PN (with the PAS-Bersatu split).

“The majority is 29 seats. Whether they can win 40 or more, or a smaller majority below 40, it depends on the turnout rate. The higher the turnout rate, the smaller BN’s chance is of winning a supermajority,” says Wong.

With the election campaign entering its second week, the situation is going to heat up. Johoreans will be bombarded with overly friendly gestures from friends and strangers alike, canvassing for their votes.

Johoreans will once again be the trendsetter for the political cycle in Malaysia. A supermajority win by BN or otherwise a win by PH could lead to a fraction of the Madani government, which is already running on the goodwill of certain leaders. 

Read also:
Snap polls a test of Bersama’s viability
Three factors that could decide the outcome
BN-PAS non-formal alliance adds a new twist
Chinese votes no longer a sure thing for DAP as frustration, fatigue simmer
Johor state seat composition over the years

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