Every vote counts in Johor with no clear-cut frontrunner – Ong Kian Ming

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SOME Umno leaders have been publicly declaring that the Johor election is a “done deal” as Barisan Nasional (BN) will easily win control of the state government and even stand a good chance of winning more than 37 out of 56 seats. 

According to these leaders, a repeat of the results in Melaka is very likely. This type of overconfidence on the part of BN is misplaced for a few reasons.

Firstly, the situation after GE14 in Johor was very different from Melaka. In Melaka, Pakatan Harapan (PH) only enjoyed a two-seat majority (15 v 13) against the BN in the 28-seat state assembly.

In Johor, PH enjoyed a comfortable 17-seat majority (37 v 19) against BN in the 56-seat state assembly. Furthermore, the percentage of seats won by PH by more than 55% of the vote was much higher in Johor than in Melaka (five seats or 17.9% in Melaka compared to 21 seats or 37.5% in Johor).

In addition, many of the seats PH won with comfortable majorities were either non-Malay-majority seats or Malay-majority seats with a significant percentage of non-Malay voters. Even with a reduced turnout among non-Malay voters, it won’t be as easy for BN to win back a significant number of these “PH-strong” seats.

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