COMMENT | Umno’s victories last week in Kinabatangan and Lamag were among the strongest for the party in Sabah in the last half-decade, far surpassing the results in the 2025 Sabah state elections.

In fact, when one looks at Umno’s national performance since the watershed year of 2018, these sorts of results are only echoed in the September 2024 by-election in Mahkota. They raise the question of whether Umno’s electoral trajectory is improving.

While it is important not to overinterpret by-election results, as the circumstances in these sorts of contests are distinct, with the sympathy factor after the death of the incumbent prominent, the Kinabatangan and Lamag results do showcase important lessons for electoral gains.

Using an analysis of the polling station results, this piece argues that the recent Sabah by-election results for Umno show that...