Johor, far from a ‘landslide’ victory for BN

While on the surface it appears that voters in Johor have shifted their preferences back to Barisan Nasional (BN), a closer look at the results will prove otherwise.

Firstly, it would be unfair to say that BN won over the majority of Johor voters as in reality, they only managed 43%.

Yes, a win is a win, but one cannot say his horse came out second when only two horses took part.

In reality, it is not that BN has regained favour among voters, but rather that the opposition lost support from among all communities.

The support for Pakatan Harapan (PH) was a far cry from the heyday of Reformasi.

Numbers don’t lie, and as far as the Johor state polls are concerned, the only party that held on to its support was Perikatan Nasional (PN).

PN not only held on to its support, but in fact achieved gains across Malay, Chinese and Indian voters.

Overall, Umno gained 3.6% in its share of votes, while MCA gained 1.6% and MIC a marginal 0.4%.

This is hardly a landslide victory, considering that Bersatu and PAS actually held on to their vote shares from 2018.

PAS only lost a marginal 0.9% while Gerakan successfully gained 1.9% of the votes.

PN made plenty of inroads in PH’s support bases, while in 35 out of 56 seats, the votes for PN and PH were much more than for BN.

BN only benefitted because there was a split in votes, nothing else.

On the other hand, PN achieved gains across all ethnic communities and more than doubled its support among the Malays.

PN captured an estimated 33% of the community in Johor.

Another factor that attributed to BN so-called “landslide” victory was the poor voter turnout from 84.5% in 2018 to a mere 54.9%.

This could be due to the fears arising from the Covid-19 pandemic and also the restrictions imposed on campaigning.

So, in conclusion, for voters like us, it would be unfair to assume that we have “returned” to BN.

Voters are neither dumb nor blind. The likes of Najib Razak and his bandwagon of cronies may be able to fool a few, but overall, the electorate still knows the truth behind the so-called “Bossku”.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of MalaysiaNow.