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.

A check of the GE13 results showed that the opposition won 16 marginal seats with majorities of less than 3,000 votes. Thirteen out of these 16 seats were Malay majority or mixed seats.

PKR holds five of these 16 marginal seats: Alor Setar, Lembah Pantai, Batu Pahat, Telok Kemang and Sungai Siput (where PSM contested under the PKR ticket).

DAP has four of these seats: Raub, Sarikei, Sibu and Sandakan. Only Raub is a mixed seat, with a 50 percent Malay majority. The rest are Chinese seats or mixed seats with Chinese majorities.

Amanah holds two seats – Kuala Krai and Sepang – while PAS has five of such seats: Bachok, Kuala Nerus, Bukit Gantang, Temerloh and Pasir Puteh.

Mustafa also noted that Chinese voters were still solidly standing with DAP while voters in Sabah and Sarawak continued support BN.

If MCA, Gerakan and MIC are unable to secure non-Malay votes, he said, BN's chance in reclaiming the two-thirds majority in Parliament would be affected.

He said Parti Warisan Sabah president Shafie Apdal (photo), who left Umno in July 2016, may not gain traction in Sabah.

"His influence is only restricted to the the east coast of the state, particularly his Semporna seat. He may have influence in two to three more seats.

"Shafie may enjoy the support of Chinese due to his ties with DAP, but he is not popular among the Kadazandusun community as he has a historic (baggage) with Usno (United Sabah National Organisation)," he said.

Shafie first started his political career in Usno, a party that ruled Sabah from 1967 to 1975. The party was dissolved in 1995 and Sabah Umno is largely made up of former Usno leaders.

"Sarawak is quite safe for BN because the Adenan Satem factor still lingers and his successor, Abang Johari Abang Openg, is doing a good job," Mustafa said.

As for Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (Bersatu), Mustafa noted that the party, led by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, may only be able to make an impact in Kedah, but not in the other states.

Despite agreeing that both Parti Warisan Sabah and Bersatu may cause some BN supporters to swing to the opposition, he said the swing may not be enough to offset the impact from three-cornered fights.

Concurring on this, political analyst Tang Ah Chai said Mahathir and his team have gone on nationwide tours after Bersatu was founded in September 2016.

Malay tsunami a hot debate

"As compared with Anwar Ibrahim's Reformasi movement, which attracted professionals, the elite and students, Mahathir aims at the Malay grassroots and Felda settlers," Tang said.

"He tried create a Malay tsunami in these areas, but I have yet to feel the outcome.

"The Malay tsunami is hotly debated among Malay politicians. You will notice that BN is being extra careful…and it gave goodies (totalling RM1.6 billion in incentives) to Felda settlers (on July 23)," he said.

Tang (photo) said the split within PKR over cooperation with PAS was something that the party, the other Harapan members and PAS needed to address before they marched to election battlefield.

"BN will benefit if the opposition continues to be divided," he said, adding that three-cornered fights among BN, Harapan and PAS and the rift within the opposition could well lead to BN reclaiming a two-thirds majority in Parliament come GE14.

Independent pollster Merdeka Center programme director Ibrahim Suffian said "multi-cornered fights will aid BN in easily retaining setas, even with much lower popular votes".

However, Ibrahim dismissed speculation that Umno and PAS would join forces in the coming election.

"In order to get PAS to collude with Umno, Umno needs to give PAS something in return for PAS to place its candidates in seats contested by the other opposition parties.

"This has a two-fold implication: firstly, it assumes that Umno leaders and candidates in places like Kelantan, Terengganu or Kedah would have to ask their eager supporters to stand down.

"Secondly, it implies that the supporters of PAS will accept a political pact with Umno, thus further exacerbating the cracks that gave rise to the formation of Amanah in the first place," Ibrahim added.

Since BN now realises that the presence of Amanah and Bersatu will assist in splitting the Malay votes that would have originally flowed to PAS, he said, the value of collusion with PAS has declined significantly.

"BN can continue to paint Pakatan as being dominated by DAP, which then makes it hard for the coalition to arrive at a pact with PAS," he added.

Ibrahim believes that the result of battles for competitive seats will likely mirror that of the by-elections in Sungai Besar in Selangor and Kuala Kangsar in Perak.