PKR won 47 seats in 2018, more than in any election before or since. In that same election its support among Malay voters fell by more than half.
It has not come back.
Three things are worth separating: what PKR once had, when it went, and what the seats it still holds are resting on.
It was real once
From 1999 to 2013 PKR held a Malay vote in the high thirties and low forties. It held it through four elections, all of them in opposition, and through the years Anwar Ibrahim spent in prison.
It held up even when the party was crushed. In 2004 PKR was left with one seat in Parliament and still took about 40% of the Malay vote where it stood.
The figures before 2018 are estimates. They were worked out across two changes to the seat boundaries, so they show the direction well and the exact size less well.
2018 broke it
In 2018 the Malay figure fell from about 38% to about 16%.
Bersatu is the reason. It joined the same coalition and offered Malay voters the same thing PKR did, with a former prime minister leading it. There was nothing left that only PKR could give them.
Bersatu left the coalition in 2020. The Malay vote did not come back. It went to PN instead.
The seat count hid it
2018 was PKR’s best election. It won 47 seats, more than in 2008 or 2013, and its Malay support had already halved by then. In 2022 it won 31 seats with about 5% of the Malay vote.
Where it stands now
The Johor roll can be read directly, which is the one place these figures are measured rather than estimated. In polling districts that are more than nine in ten Malay, PKR took 5.4% in 2022 and 5.5% this year. In districts more than nine in ten Chinese it took 68.2%, then 78.5%.
Among Malay voters it has stopped falling. Among Chinese voters it is still rising.
What the seats rest on
PKR holds 29 seats in the peninsula. On average they are 60% Bumiputera. It holds them because the Malay vote splits between BN and PN. In 2022 PN took 57.0% of Malay voters across the peninsula, BN took 35.7% and PH took 6.1%.
If the BN and PN votes are counted together in each seat, PH drops from 71 peninsular seats to 43. PKR falls furthest, from 29 to 11.
Every seat that changes hands is Malay-majority. Where Malays are not the largest group, nothing moves at all.
Anwar’s own seat is among them. He won Tambun with 39.8% of the vote, against Bersatu’s 36.8% and Umno’s 22.5%. Their two totals come to 74,050 votes against his 49,655.
That count assumes every BN and PN voter would back one candidate. Vote transfers are never that complete, so the figures show the furthest the damage could go rather than where it would land.
PKR’s Malay vote has been under 20% for two elections. The Malay-majority seats it still holds are held on a split opposition. They last as long as the split does.
