A media statement by Dr Ong Kian Ming on the 2026 Johor state election results:

Pakatan Harapan, and especially DAP leaders, seem to be in continued denial over the causes of the Johor state election results — PH in danger of losing all but one of the 15 Parliaments seat it won in the 2022 general election

After the landslide victory by Barisan Nasional (BN) in Johor where it won 48 out of 56 state seats (85%) with a popular vote of almost 60%, the reaction of Pakatan Harapan (PH), especially DAP leaders, seem to reflect a state of continued denial with very little admission of what went wrong in a disastrous campaign for the coalition.

When I first projected a landslide victory for BN in Johor, about one week into the campaign, this projection was met by scepticism among some PH leaders. Datuk Seri Fahmi Fadzil, the multimedia and communications minister, said that “He has a right to his opinion, but it is incorrect and far from reality”. While my initial projection of 53 seats for BN was not correct, I do not think it was “far from reality”. In an interview with The Star Online, which was recorded on July 2, 2026, I predicted that BN would win between 45 and 50 seats, which was more accurate.

The early response from some DAP leaders do not indicate, at least not publicly, that they have learned crucial lessons from the Johor polls. DAP secretary general Anthony Loke Siew Fook, while stating the fact that many of the votes which went to Perikatan Nasional (PN) in the 2022 state and federal elections were “transferred” to BN in this state election, did not bring up why PH failed to win or even make a play for the PN votes, which were presumably up for play. In addition, he failed to take note of the fact that support for PH fell by 10% when compared to the 2022 general election, which should be PH’s frame of reference, especially if it wants to retain the 15 Parliament seats in won in the 15th general election or GE15 (see Table 1 below).

In addition, even though DAP managed to retain six out of the 10 seats which it was the incumbent, its vote share dropped from 61.2% in 2022 to 50.8% in the 2026 Johor state election, representing a drop of 10.4%. This drop in support cannot be attribute to PN’s vote “transfer” to BN but a reflection of the drop in support for PH and DAP (see Table 2 below). 

Tony Pua, in a Facebook posting, said that DAP’s performance was “not great. But credible”. In the same post, he said that Bersama was a “spoiler” in some seats, which caused DAP to lose the Perling state seat, for example. For this point, he was called out and criticised by many of the two thousand or so comments, mostly in English (at the time of writing). There was absolutely no introspection as to why these voters chose to vote for Bersama or why DAP failed to retain four state seats, including the Perling state seat.

The DAP Johor state chief and Kulai member of Parliament came closest to admitting mistakes and shortcomings of the campaign in Johor in her Facebook post but this wasn’t enough to stop many of the negative comments in response to this post, in different languages.

There were a few things which PH and DAP got wrong in this campaign. These include the following:

i) Lack of a coherent campaign narrative

Before even the campaign began, PH already started off on the wrong foot by calling BN “betrayers” or “pengkhianat” for deciding to contest on its own in the Johor state election during a heated PH convention on May 17, 2026. The PH state chief, Aminolhuda Hasan, who opted not to contest in the Johor state polls, even stated that PH would “bury” or “kuburkan” BN in Johor for the second time. This kind of attacking mindset, perhaps not suitable for a state election in a place like Johor, where voters value a more practical and policy-minded approach towards governing, would plague PH during the entire campaign, including Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim calling the Johor menteri besar candidate (then), Datuk Onn Hafiz Ghazi, “kurang cerdik” or “not very clever” during one of his campaign speeches. The delay in launching the PH manifesto, one week after BN had already launched theirs, and with no clear spokesperson to explain the manifesto to the public, allowed BN to label the PH manifesto as a “copy and paste” version of the BN manifesto. The attempt, particularly by DAP, to say that a vote for BN is a vote for PAS, and to bring to link the Johor campaign to the possible royal pardon (or house arrest) of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, looked increasingly desperate towards the last days of the campaign and obviously did not work. In other words, the entire PH campaign in Johor was a “hot mess” compared to the disciplined campaign of BN, led by Onn Hafiz, and ably backed up by Khairy Jamaluddin during his campaign for various BN candidates in the state.

ii) Lack of coordination among the PH parties

During the campaign, I was receiving images and posters via WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram of various ceramahs being organised by PH across different constituencies in Johor. What became clear to me was that each PH component party was running their own party campaign in Johor rather than running a coordinate PH campaign. For example, most of the ceramahs in seats contested by DAP featured mostly DAP speakers. Even in seats like Jementah (part of the Segamat Parliament constituency, with a PKR MP), Penggeram (part of the Batu Pahat Parliament seat, with a PKR MP), Johor Jaya (part of the Pasir Gudang Parliament seat, with a PKR MP) and Perling (part of the Pulai Parliament seat, with an Amanah MP), I did not see much the presence of the respective MPs for these constituencies in the ceramahs or the walkabouts organised by DAP. Perhaps they were busy campaigning for their respective parties in other constituencies, but the outcome was that PH was not properly coordinating its campaign.

iii) Lack of self-awareness, especially among certain DAP leaders

In the interview on The Star Online, I said that BN had two poster boys in the Johor campaign. Other than Onn Hafiz, DAP deputy national chairman Nga Kor Ming. Nga, in an exclusive interview with Oriental Daily, a Chinese language new outlet, said that he would resign from the Cabinet if BN won big in Johor and former prime minister Najib is freed. This not only allowed BN leaders, including Umno deputy president and Malaysia’s foreign minister, Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan, to urge Nga to resign even before the polling day, but also made this a campaign theme for the Malay voters to come out and vote against PH and to vote for BN.

To a lesser extent, the remarks by Tony Pua, before and during the Johor campaign, on the pig-rearing issue and later the LRT3 issue in Selangor, seemingly directed against the Sultan of Selangor, also provided ammunition to BN and PN cybertroopers to use this issue to galvanise the Malay voters to swing their support behind BN in Johor.

I do not have conclusive survey data to support this view but one of the reasons why I think the Malay voter turnout in the Johor state election, estimated at 77%, was much higher than the Chinese voter turnout, estimated at 58%, was because the Malay voters were much more motivated to turn out to vote against DAP and PH (and in support of BN) compared to the Chinese voters, who did not have a compelling reason to come out to vote for PH.

I am making an educated guess that the anti-DAP which led to an anti-PH swing resulted in Malay support swinging back strongly to BN with an estimated 85% of Malay support in the Johor state election.

While Chinese support for DAP and PH remained above 50%, estimated at a maximum of 80% overall (but much less in seats like Paloh and Yong Peng which were won easily by the MCA incumbents), this is a reduction of at least 15% compared to the 95% support received by PH in the 2022 general election.

Sadly, many DAP leaders don’t realise that what they say in the ceramahs in their own constituencies will affect the Malay sentiment in other constituencies including those contested by PKR and Amanah which are mixed and Malay-majority. DAP may have defended six of the 10 seats it won in the 2022 state election in Johor, but at what cost, especially to its coalition partners?

iv) Losing the moral high ground (what little was left)

One of the incidents which were reported during the final days of the campaign was when two DAP campaigners, Ong Hui Xue (a special officer to Wong Kah Woh, the deputy education minister) and David Tiang (special officer to Nga Kor Ming, the housing and local government minister) were caught on video hanging a banner with the title “Bebas Najib” next to the billboard of Li Tiang Soon (or “Ah Soon”), the BN-MCA candidate for Yong Peng.

What really shocked me was when Wong not only defended the two DAP campaigners for putting up this banner during a campaign speech in Yong Peng but that the two campaigners were called on stage by Howard Lee, the MP for Ipoh Timor, so that they could be applauded and congratulated by the crowd of DAP supporters! The DAP I joined back in 2012 would have criticised BN for hanging banners demonising Tan Sri Lim Kit Siang for being anti-Islam during elections time, for example, and would have lambasted any BN candidate for asking their campaigners who hung such banners to go on stage to be applauded and congratulated! To me, this was the moment when DAP lost any moral high ground that it may have had, including on the 1MDB issue. (And this is after the revelation by a former DAP Skudai state assemblyperson that a senior DAP leader who had been campaigning hard against Naijb on the 1MDB issue also told her to expect Najib to be pardoned eventually, in a very matter of fact way).

v) Loss of trust towards PH among Indian voters

I do not have access to the detailed saluran results for Johor which would reveal more distinct voting patterns among the Indian community but the anecdotal sharing by former Klang MP Charles Santiago, that the Indian voters are “angry, not disappointed” with PH when meeting leaders and voters among the Indian community in Johor are telling. The fact that DAP lost badly in Paloh, a seat with 15% Indian voters, and lost Perling, a previously safe seat with 13% Indian voters, should be an indication that the Indian voters have defected from PH in larger numbers in Johor. This is a reflection of a much larger national trend where there is no clear narrative from PH on its deliverables to the Indian community, despite numerous declarations and campaign manifesto promises in the past.

Of course, there are some trends in Johor that doesn’t apply to national sentiment and to other states. This is what some PH and DAP leaders have and will continue to say. Khalid Samad, from Amanah, after the Johor results were announced, said that PH still has the advantage at the federal level because Anwar is a better PM candidate than whatever BN has to offer. While this may be the case if we take the latest Merdeka Center polls as an indication, would PH be confident of retaining the same number of seats which it won in GE15 (PH won 82 Parliament seats in 2022) if a general election were to be triggered before the end of 2026?

Yes, BN doesn’t have Onn Hafiz as a poster boy in states other than Johor, but does PH have someone close to the stature and popularity of Khairy Jamaluddin at the national level, who has higher approval ratings among Malay respondents than Anwar in the recent Merdeka Center polls? While KJ may not be the BN candidate for the prime minister, he has shown in Johor that he can be a very effective campaigner, perhaps more effective that Anwar himself.

Even if we restrict BN’s popularity to Johor, a translation of the Johor state election to the Parliament seats shows that BN would go from winning the nine seats it won in GE15 to winning 25 out of 26 Parliament seats in Johor, including winning 14 out of the 15 PH seats, with PH only winning the Parliament seat of Bakri. Of course, PH leaders can say that they would fare better in a general election compared to a state election but this remains to be seen as other factors could come into play in a general election that would continue to disadvantage PH, including lower turnout rates among PH supporters.

BN should not be overconfident and expect the same kind of result in the upcoming Negeri Sembilan state election. They do not have the same kinds of advantages such as having a popular MB candidate like Onn Hafiz. It is also not the incumbent state government and PH, by virtue of being the incumbent, should be able to run a more coherent and disciplined campaign.

What may continue to apply in Negeri Sembilan is the loss of confidence and support among the Malay voters towards PH as well as continued implicit and explicit support for BN by PAS. It is too early to say whether this will be sufficient for BN to retake Negeri Sembilan. But what is clear is that another wake-up call has been issued to PH and particularly to DAP. I am not confident that the DAP leaders have woken up yet.

Prepared by Dr Ong Kian Ming, Adjunct Professor, Taylor’s University, July 13, 2026.