PH Kept Governing As The Votes Left, Now The Votes Have Run Out

JOHOR, 28 JULY 2026 —

Headline: PH Kept Governing As The Votes Left, Now The Votes Have Run Out Lead: The last time former DAP analyst Ong Kian Ming made state election projections, in Johor earlier this year, he got it right. Now he says BN and PN are on track to take Negeri Sembilan — and PH's numbers have been falling since 2018. Body: The last time former DAP analyst Ong Kian Ming made state election projections, in Johor earlier this year, he got it right. Now he says BN and PN are on track to take Negeri Sembilan — and PH’s numbers have been falling since 2018.

In an analysis published on Monday (27 July), Ong projected Barisan Nasional (BN) and Perikatan Nasional (PN) — cooperating for the first time — to win between 23 and 25 of the state’s 36 seats while PH, he said, is likely to end up with 11 to 13, with PKR expected to hold just one of those and the rest going to DAP.

Simple majority to form government is 19 seats, and BN-PN are projected to get there comfortably.

The core of his argument is not about sentiment, it is about arithmetic.

In 2022, BN and PN were competing against each other, Malay votes split three ways and PH slipped through with 44.4 per cent of the popular vote and held on to government through a post-election deal with BN.

This time, that split does not exist, and the former Bangi MP projects Malay voter support for the BN-PN cooperation to exceed 70 per cent.

“With the electoral pact between PN and BN, it is very likely that Malay support for both coalitions will exceed 70 per cent, allowing candidates from both coalitions to avoid splitting the Malay vote, which had allowed PH to win a number of seats in the 2018 state election.”

They kept governing despite the decline — first because Bersatu was still with them in 2018, then through a seat-sharing arrangement in the 2023 state election that kept them in Wisma Negeri — but the voters were already leaving.

Ong singled out Chennah — held by Loke — as one of the hardest seats to call in this election.

Chennah has a 47.8 per cent Malay electorate, and anti-DAP and anti-PH sentiment among a portion of those voters makes it genuinely unpredictable, he said.

Ong flagged the seat as “too close to call,” noting that a swing among Orang Asli voters — who make up roughly seven per cent of the electorate and have historically leaned BN — “may be sufficient to give BN a small margin of victory” against BN’s candidate, MCA’s John Siow Kong Choon.

That is the margin separating the DAP secretary-general from losing his seat — a small community’s loyalty, and which way it breaks on polling day.

Ong projects BN-PN to already hold 17 safe seats — they need 19 to govern.

Of the 10 closely contested seats he identified, he projects BN to win Jeram Padang and Linggi, while PN is expected to take Klawang, Serting, Sikamat and Ampangan — six battleground seats in total, clearing the majority bar with room to spare.

As a stress test, Ong noted that even if BN were to lose Linggi, the BN-PN combination could still secure 23 seats — enough for a majority to form the state government.

Ong is brief on Bersatu: contesting as a third party, it is expected to have limited impact and will not change the overall outcome, though it could act as a spoiler in some seats by drawing votes away from BN or PH.

For a party that was once inside PH’s own coalition and helped them win this state in 2018, that is a notable fall. Source: The Rakyat Post Published: 2026-07-27T15:21:19.000Z Region: OSINT Topic: Economy (AI-assisted rewrite, based on the original source)

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