Johor election: where winning isn’t enough for Malaysia’s Barisan Nasional

Voters in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor will cast their ballots on Saturday in a high-stakes election that is expected to bring Barisan Nasional (BN) back to power, exposing deeper cracks in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s administration.

BN is part of Anwar’s unity government but will go head to head against federal partner Pakatan Harapan (PH) in a state long regarded as a BN stronghold.

The contest for Johor’s 56-seat assembly has put Anwar’s multi-ethnic party in an awkward position, but analysts say the election is not about who would win but how big the win would be.

Azmi Hassan, a senior fellow at the Nusantara Academy for Strategic Research, said for PH the benchmark was not forming the state government – which he described as “very impossible” – but winning more seats than it had held before dissolution.

“For PH, a good result would be to win more than the 12 seats they had. If they win fewer than 12 seats, that would be a bad result,” he said.

PH leaders have sought to frame the election as a fight for checks and balances rather than assuming control of the state government.