With Pakatan Harapan having officially shut its doors on cooperation with PAS, political analysts say the BN may regain a two-thirds majority in Parliament in the coming general election as a result of opposition votes being split in three-cornered battles.

The analysts said BN, which currently controls 134 out of the 222 parliamentary seats, only needs an extra 14 seats to reclaim the two-thirds majority of 148 seats.

In a scenario where BN, Pakatan Harapan and PAS are engaged in three-cornered fights, marginal seats that were won by the opposition with less than 3,000-vote majorities in the 13th general election in 2013 could easily fall to BN.

"This is particularly so in Malay majority seats and mixed seats," said the Politics, Security and International Affairs Cluster head of the National Council of Professors, Mohamed Mustafa Ishak.

Three-cornered fights would cause Harapan to lose votes that would otherwise go to PAS, while the Islamic party will lose some of the non-Malay votes, Mustafa said...