The study, which analysed Election Commission (EC) score sheets from all 1,541 polling streams across the 15 BN-MCA seats, found that younger voters gave BN stronger support than older voters.
PETALING JAYA: Younger voters, long regarded as a key support base for Pakatan Harapan (PH), played a decisive role in delivering Barisan Nasional (BN) victories in MCA-contested seats during the Johor state election, according to a new study by the Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research (Insap).
The study, which analysed Election Commission (EC) score sheets from all 1,541 polling streams across the 15 BN-MCA seats, found that younger voters gave BN stronger support than older voters in 219 of the 281 polling centres studied.
On average, younger voters’ support for BN was 8.5 percentage points higher than that of older voters.
The findings, covering 860,421 voters — nearly one-third of Johor’s electorate — challenge long-held assumptions that younger Malaysians naturally lean towards PH while older voters remain loyal to BN.
Insap chairman Datuk Dr Pamela Yong said the election outcome showed that voters were increasingly moving away from traditional political loyalties and instead judging governments based on performance.
“The results of this election show that all three assumptions have collapsed, and the finding that matters is that voters rewarded delivery.
“(The voters) judged the BN state government based on its response to the rising cost of living, the economy and jobs, and rewarded it.
“This was substance over sentiment,” she said.
Yong, who is also MCA deputy secretary-general, said voters had also differentiated between state and federal governments when casting their ballots.
The study identified three assumptions that no longer held true: that older voters supported BN while younger voters backed PH; that returning outstation voters automatically favoured PH; and that BN’s victories in mixed seats were due to lower Chinese voter turnout.
According to Insap, the same polling streams had leaned towards PH during the 2022 Johor state election, with younger voters then showing stronger support for the coalition.
The institute said the latest results indicated a shift among younger voters, who were less tied to past political movements and more focused on governance outcomes.
The report suggested PH’s strongest support now came from middle-aged voters shaped by the Reformasi campaigns of 2008 and 2018, while younger voters without those historical political attachments were more likely to evaluate parties based on current performance.
The study also challenged the assumption that higher turnout among outstation voters would automatically benefit PH.
Turnout increased across all 15 seats analysed, with the sharpest rises recorded in areas surrounding Johor Bahru, where many young Johoreans live and work.
Insap said returning voters and first-time voters, including postal voters, were among the groups that shifted most towards BN.
While PH-DAP won the postal vote in the same seats in 2022, BN-MCA secured about three-quarters of postal votes in the 2026 election, compared with about one-third previously.
BN also increased its postal vote share in every seat analysed.
Although the electoral roll does not record voters’ ethnicity, Insap grouped polling districts based on demographic composition and found turnout in predominantly Chinese areas increased between 15.6 and 17 percentage points, compared with an 11.7-point increase in Malay-majority areas.
The turnout gap between Chinese and Malay voters also narrowed from about 12 percentage points to eight.
The report concluded that BN’s gains were not driven by lower Chinese participation, but by electorate growth, particularly among younger voters and in mixed constituencies.
“While DAP retained its traditional strongholds, the wider electorate surrounding those areas shifted towards BN,” said Yong.
Insap also cited its April 2026 survey, which found that the cost of living remained the voters’ top concern at 66%, followed by the economy and jobs at 56%, and political stability at 50%.
The survey showed voters gave the Johor state government higher ratings than the federal administration in handling key issues, including the cost of living (55%), economy (54%) and basic infrastructure (62%), compared with 45% approval for the federal government.
Yong said the findings showed that no political party could assume any community remained a guaranteed support base.
“The clearest lesson for every political party is that no community’s vote is a fixed deposit anymore.
“Support has to be earned voter by voter and cycle by cycle, and that discipline binds BN and MCA as much as it binds PH and DAP,” she said.
However, Yong cautioned against using Johor’s results as a national or state-level predictor.
“Each state is fought on its own merits, and nothing in the Johor result carries over automatically,” she said.
She added that voters were increasingly rewarding governments based on delivery and track record rather than emotion or sentiment.
