Malaysia 2022 General Election Nov 19th

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at neighboring PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

[jaichind]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at nearby PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold on because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

All good points.  Clearly, I cannot know for sure one way or another.  I think my response would be

a) Standards are different for men and women and marrying outside their tribe/religion
b) This type of swing is quite large after we consider that
   1) This is not a rural district
   2) incumbent is PKR who is expected to win so anti-BN tactical voting can be ruled out
   3) Clearly the Anwar name would minimize the swing but instead the swing seems larger than most even if there are others that have similar swings (see 1) and 2))

[Logical]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at neighboring PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

You got me there, they're all male. Sexism played some role in this no doubt. But that said, I don't believe her marriage was even a top 10 issue among the voters in her constituency.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at neighboring PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

You got me there, they're all male. Sexism played some role in this no doubt. But that said, I don't believe her marriage was even a top 10 issue among the voters in her constituency.

It certainly was not all-important, admist all the other things going on. It might have been a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. But it does seem to have moved some voters. How many, I dunno...

[jaichind]

Another possible but unlikely coalition: "Alliance of backstabbers" or "That 80s Show" government:

All non-DAP and non-PAS parties come together with Anwar Ibrahim being PM for the first 2.5 years and then Muhyiddin Yassin being PM for the last 2.5 years.

Looking at reaction/incentives

In Peninsular Malaysia
PKR -> Anwar gets to be PM. Yes.
PPBM -> Muhyiddin Yassin gets to be PM again in 2.5 years. Also, no DAP and PAS are a long-term threat. Yes
UMNO - we are part of the government and there is no DAP.  Also, PAS is clearly a long-term threat so this government can get all non-PAS Malay parties to gang up on them.  Yes.
AMANAH - We get to stop the hated PAS. Yes.
Chinese/Indian community  -> Yes, DAP is out but the threat of a powerful PAS in government is averted.  That sounds like a good compromise
Conservative Malays -> No DAP.  Yes.

In Sabah/Sawawak
Sabah regional parties -> We do not like PAS and in some cases, DAP is an enemy.  Yes
GPS -> DAP is our enemy in a bunch of seats and we do not like PAS.  Yes.

Historically UMNO PAS and DAP are the parties with strong grassroots.  With UMNO getting a potentially fatal blow in this election that leaves just PAS and DAP that is a threat to everyone else.
 Between DAP and PAS, they do not have more than 85 MPs so such a government would be easy to form.  It requires Anwar and Muhyiddin Yassin to put aside their egos to come up with such a government which I would argue would be stable since no polarizing party is in the alliance.

[jaichind]

Sabah/Labuan vote share

                           Contest         Win           Vote share
BN                          14               7                 19.73%
  UMNO                      12              6                 17.55%
  PBRS                         2              1                   2.18%

PN                          15               8                  19.49%
  PPBM                        8               6                   10.35%
  PBS                          4                1                    5.95%
  STAR                        2                1                    2.72%
  SAPP                        1                0                    0.46%

PH                         25               5                   27.35%
  PKR                         10              1                   10.67%
  DAP                          7               2                    8.83%
  UPKO                        5               2                    6.63%
  AMANAH                   2               0                    0.92%
  MUDA                       1               0                    0.29%

WARISAN               26               3                   24.32%

KDM+                      9               3                   7.15%
 KDM                          7                1                  4.75%
 PPBM rebel                 2               2                   2.40%

PH and WARISAN together win a majority of the votes but their split cost them 2-3 seats. WARISAN  clearly underperformed as opposition votes in some cases shifted from WARISAN  to PH. Despite some leaks the BN-PN alliance held in most places.  KDM bloc outperformed both in terms of vote share and seats and took seats from the BN and PN.  

[Novelty]

 Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.

She can't marry a non-Muslim in Malaysia.  Her Chinese husband would have to convert first to a Muslim before he marries her.  Otherwise their marriage is illegal in Malaysia.

I don't think this is the main reason why she lost her seat.

[Logical]

The Borneo Bloc (GPS and GRS) declare their support for Muhyiddin. BN chief Zahid claim that they have not made any deals with PN. I think BN using delaying tactics to try to get as many concessions as possible from PN but this is Malaysia, stranger things have happened.

[jaichind]

Battle on TikTok seems evenly matched for the 3 fronts.

Some post-election analysis indicate that PPBM-PAS were very effective in making various short videos on TikTok on the BN economic and corruption record.  PPBM-PAS was able to pin the inflation surge on BN through these short videos which had a wide reach.  The growth of TikTok in Malaysia over the last 4 years must have been significant and PPBM-PAS seems to be ahead of BN and even PH in taking advantage of it.

[jaichind]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/malaysia-ge15-calls-umno-president-ahmad-zahids-resignation-grow-louder-3087806

"Malaysia GE15: Calls for UMNO president Ahmad Zahid's resignation grow louder"

Still no signs that Zahid will resign.  I am surprised given he singlehandedly led BN to this debacle 

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH won in Georgetown by Stalin margins.
It seems they won over 80% there in most seats, and only one seat was remotely competitive.

[jaichind]

It seems one of the conditions PN is giving to BN for including BN in a PN-led government plus BN's share of ministers is that Ahmad Zahid has to resign as Prez of UMNO.  It seems Ahmad Zahid is not willing to go along with this ergo there is a deadlock.  I expect a coup against Ahmad Zahid within UMNO soon if this deadlock continues.

[jaichind]

Out of the 164 Peninsular Malaysia seats, we can divide them up into 83 seats where the Malay population is above 66% and 81 seats where the Malay population is below 66%.  We can then look at seats and vote share

                    PH          BN          PN       Total
Above 66%    4            12          67        83
                 19.27%   29.86%  49.69%

Below 66%    67          11            3         81
                 55.08%   20.26%  23.26%   

Total             71          23          70       164
                 39.42%   24.46%  34.82%

PH and PN are total mirror images of each other in terms of seats with BN being competitive in both types of seats but crushed by polarized and anti-BN tactical voting.

[jaichind]

Seat and vote share by state in Peninsular Malaysia

                            PH                   BN                       PN              
Perlis                  19.77%            23.85%             54.15%
                             0                     0                         3

Kedah                22.03%           20.79%               54.86%
                             1                     0                        13

Kelantan              8.80%            26.79%               63.66%
                             0                     0                        14

Terengganu         5.49%             31.68%               62.38%
                             0                     0                          8

Penang              59.99%            15.19%                23.96%
                            10                    0                          3

Perak                43.38%            24.98%                30.73%
                            11                    3                         10

Pahang              22.90%            38.38%                37.91%
                             2                     5                           7

Selangor            52.81%            17.40%                27.54%
                           16                     0                           6

Kuala Lumpur     62.63%            15.99%                19.42%
                           10                     1                           0

Negeri Sembilan 44.80%            32.17%                21.96%
                            3                      5                           0

Melaka               38.69%            29.63%                30.92%
                            3                      0                           3

Johor                 42.26%            30.64%                 26.62%
                          15                      9                           2

[Joseph Cao]

Anwar's daughter Nurul Izzah's defeat in P44 Permatang Pauh was a shock.  The Anwar clan had controlled this seat since 1982.

It went from

2018
PH-PKR     50.89% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  28.45%
GS-PAS     20.66%

to
2022
PN-PAS     43.04%
PH-PKR     37.01% (Nurul Izzah)
BN-UMNO  19.41%

There is no sign of why the PKR base would decline so much.  I can see how the UMNO vote might go over to PAS but that does not explain such a large drop in vote share.  Then I found this news from August 2022

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/people/article/3187952/daughter-malaysias-anwar-ibrahim-marries-low-key-ceremony

"Daughter of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim marries in low-key ceremony"

It seems that Nurul Izzah was married and divorced in 2015.  She re-married in August 2022 to a Chinese academic.  I can see how this is going to consolidate the Malay-Muslim vote against her.  Getting divorced.  Fine.  Getting married to someone outside your tribe and religion.  Not fine.   Nurul Izzah is free to marry anyone she wants but she will enjoy her new marriage without being a MP.  I would have tied the knot after the election but Nurul Izzah should be free to prioritize her personal and political affairs how she wants.

I really doubt that this is the case. Many senior UMNO figures were married to Chinese spouses and I do not remember them suffering any electoral penalty. If you look at nearby PH held seats (Parit Buntar, Merbok, Kulim Bandar Baharu) and other Malay majority seats in Penang (Kepala Batas and Tasek Gelugor) you can see that PH support went down by more than 10% and PN doubled PAS numbers. She lost because she was swept by the PN wave in Northern Malaysia and she does not have Anwar or Wan Azizah's star power. The only outlier in North Malaysia was Sungai Petani where PH managed to hold on because the PN candidate is a Chinese from GERAKAN.

All good points.  Clearly, I cannot know for sure one way or another.  I think my response would be

a) Standards are different for men and women and marrying outside their tribe/religion
b) This type of swing is quite large after we consider that
   1) This is not a rural district
   2) incumbent is PKR who is expected to win so anti-BN tactical voting can be ruled out
   3) Clearly the Anwar name would minimize the swing but instead the swing seems larger than most even if there are others that have similar swings (see 1) and 2))

Without saying too much about this specific case, my first question here would be, how many of those senior UMNO figures were women?

You got me there, they're all male. Sexism played some role in this no doubt. But that said, I don't believe her marriage was even a top 10 issue among the voters in her constituency.

It certainly was not all-important, admist all the other things going on. It might have been a death-by-a-thousand-cuts situation. But it does seem to have moved some voters. How many, I dunno...

Will no one rid us of these muddlesome takes?

It is legally impossible for this kind of marriage to be carried out in Malaysia. Even if this were allowed and went exactly as described, there is a reason it was described as “low-key” and not common knowledge. Even if it were, allow me to present some evidence that the electoral effect would have been minimal at best.

There has been exactly one marriage that became a salient issue this campaign period. I mentioned it myself, briefly. MP-elect for P103 Puchong Yeo Bee Yin was criticized for a potential conflict of interest because her (also recently married) husband is a filthy rich developer with properties blanketing the general area in which the constituency lies, although none are technically located within the seat itself. This played out over a few days, and Puchong is a big place with many plugged-in voters who would have heard about it. YBY is also a woman. That should eliminate the sexism comparison.

To be thorough, let us also compare it to a control case. P102 Bangi is located next door, has a very similar racial makeup, was also being vacated by a high-profile DAP MP with strong constituency work, and was contested by a candidate whose most recent political work was in Johor (i.e. you would expect the new replacements’ vote share to drop by about the same amount). If this marriage story – which got much more traction in Puchong during the campaign than Nurul Izzah’s did in Permatang Pauh – had an effect, you would expect it to show up when compared to the Bangi result.

Bangi:
Ong Kian Ming (GE14): 65.60%
Syahredzan (GE15): 57.95%

Puchong:
Gobind (GE14): 72.39%
Yeo Bee Yin (GE15): 65.67%

I believe most of you can math. You can see that there was, in fact, no discernible effect. If a rather big story didn’t affect Puchong then the non-story of Nurul Izzah’s marriage has and would always have had zero effect on Permatang Pauh. Not sure why this was even floated as a possibility or taken seriously. It makes zero sense.

Here are some actual reports relevant to electoral stuff on the ground:

https://www.thevibes.com/articles/news/77960/ge15-outsourcing-work-lack-of-attention-leads-to-political-bigwigs-downfalls

It is alluded to in that article, but Nurul Izzah also went on a sabbatical in 2020 to reflect on her role in politics, which is kind of difficult for an incumbent member of Parliament to do. This was around the time she decided to “step back from active politics” but still ran anyway in this election. This was also around the time voters would have rather appreciated an incumbent MP being present enough to deal with little things like a pandemic. She appointed proxies to help with constituency work in the meantime, but this was also around the time one of them defected, one was still working as a state exco, and one was tied up with a court case.

And I should add that this issue in general is not new for her. Sources working on the ground in her old seat of P121 Lembah Pantai have said that Fahmi Fadzil’s constituency work is far more thorough and frequent than hers was, despite her flipping the seat in the first place. There are MPs who simply put some more currency into working the streets on a regular basis as opposed to investing everything in parliamentary work, from what I know of Fahmi and Nurul Izzah this corroborates the general impression that they fall on opposite sides of that divide.

PH won in Georgetown by Stalin margins.
It seems they won over 80% there in most seats, and only one seat was remotely competitive.

As they usually do, yes. Not 80%, but comfortably by parliamentary standards.

[Joseph Cao]

Looking over the results in Peninsular Malaysia seat-by-seat my conclusion is that PH was doomed from the beginning and that there was no way they could have "won" this election.

It seems that BN underperformed across the board regardless of the demographic nature of the district.  This says that negativity toward Ahmad Zahid Hamidi most likely pushed a bunch of BN votes over to PN which had a surge and took a bunch of PH seats.

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         71
PN                 34.82%         70
BN                 24.46%         23

To get a sense of how one can filter this impact out in a way that benefits PH, the best way is to assume that 16% of the PN vote goes to BN.  That would produce

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         69
PN                 29.25%         45
BN                 30.03%         50

Where BN gains a bunch of seats from PN but PH-MUDA loses a few seats to BN which cancels out the gains PH-MUDA makes from PN.  So it seems even if BN and PN have equal vote share giving PH-MUDA an almost 10% vote share lead over both PH-MUDA failed to win a majority of seats in Peninsular Malaysia.  There are just too many heavy Malay seats where PH vote share is below 30% which means it could not win those seats no matter how the BN-PN vote distribution takes.

This is the ultimate story of the election, I think. Everything else flows from that calculus that PH is not a viable or desirable choice in many parts of the country that wanted to make a statement on BN's arrogance, even though both PH and PN ran on that. So they picked PN instead. This accounts for pretty much all of the BN seats I marked down that ultimately went to PN, as well as some secondary knock-on effects where that PN surge allowed a PH or other candidate to sneak up the middle.

[jaichind]

Thanks for sharing all that info on the Nurul Izzah and clearing things up with her situation.

[jaichind]

Looking over the results in Peninsular Malaysia seat-by-seat my conclusion is that PH was doomed from the beginning and that there was no way they could have "won" this election.

It seems that BN underperformed across the board regardless of the demographic nature of the district.  This says that negativity toward Ahmad Zahid Hamidi most likely pushed a bunch of BN votes over to PN which had a surge and took a bunch of PH seats.

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         71
PN                 34.82%         70
BN                 24.46%         23

To get a sense of how one can filter this impact out in a way that benefits PH, the best way is to assume that 16% of the PN vote goes to BN.  That would produce

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         69
PN                 29.25%         45
BN                 30.03%         50

Where BN gains a bunch of seats from PN but PH-MUDA loses a few seats to BN which cancels out the gains PH-MUDA makes from PN.  So it seems even if BN and PN have equal vote share giving PH-MUDA an almost 10% vote share lead over both PH-MUDA failed to win a majority of seats in Peninsular Malaysia.  There are just too many heavy Malay seats where PH vote share is below 30% which means it could not win those seats no matter how the BN-PN vote distribution takes.

This is the ultimate story of the election, I think. Everything else flows from that calculus that PH is not a viable or desirable choice in many parts of the country that wanted to make a statement on BN's arrogance, even though both PH and PN ran on that. So they picked PN instead. This accounts for pretty much all of the BN seats I marked down that ultimately went to PN, as well as some secondary knock-on effects where that PN surge allowed a PH or other candidate to sneak up the middle.

If one assumed that most of the BN-PN undecided broke in favor of BN which you and I had expected I can set that PN->BN shift to 25% of the PN vote which would produce

                    Vote share  Seats
PH-MUDA       39.42%         69
BN                 33.16%         66
PN                 26.11%         29

And if you go seat-by-seat this shift has a large number of our projections being accurate.  Again, PH-MUD is at 69 seats in this scenario.  It seems that however one set this PN->BN shift PH gains some seats from PN but loses to BN of a similar number of seats to produce a very close result to what took place in reality.

[jaichind]

Sarawak results

Not a massive GPS landslide like the 2021 Sarawak state election with PH getting a respectable vote share.

P220 Baram is not all counted yet due to the storm but the result is clear and the vote shares might shift a bit when they do finish counting.

                       Seats        Vote share
GPS                  23              56.14%
PH-PBM               7              32.66% (I include PBM in PH bloc since PH backed the PBM incumbent)
PN                      1                3.04% (mostly PKR->PPBM backgrounds)
PSB+                  0                5.38%
GPS/PSB rebels    0               2.36%

PSB+ is mostly a GPS splinter front.

There does seem to be some level of opposition to GPS but unlike in 2018, PN PSB and various GPS/PSB rebels are getting some of that anti-GPS vote versus all being concentrated on PH.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

Guess at this point the DAP is just happy to be in government again?

[Joseph Cao]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

…this happened last year, too, when the PN government collapsed. UMNO threw DAP a lifeline and they took it, a year after PN defected and collapsed the PH state government.

Everybody who has watched Perak politics since 2009 at least has learned to expect the unexpected. I am no longer surprised by anything that comes out of that state.

[Joseph Cao]

PH and UMNO are talking, would be a pretty strange alliance but UMNO and PN would probably see UMNO struggling to differenate itself from it's partner.

PN+BN feels like the old UMNO party united again. PH+BN is much more unprecedented...best analogy I can think of at the moment is the Socialist-LDP coalition in 1994 Japan, but that's still far from perfect.

https://twitter.com/fmtoday/status/1594535766549372930
Well it's happening on a state-level at least. Malasiya realy does have something for weird political alliances that bring old enemies together.

Guess at this point the DAP is just happy to be in government again?

If by "again" you mean "preserve the existing arrangement" then yes.