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Ushar Daniele

Malaysia’s Negeri Sembilan state heads to the polls on Saturday, but a growing portion of its young workers – and their votes – are based elsewhere.
Leaving home was never Ammar Idlan Hassan’s long-term plan, but better pay and stronger career prospects eventually drew the 27-year-old project engineer away from Seremban, the state capital.
He now lives in Gelang Patah, a border town in Johor, from which he commutes to Singapore for work. “The pay is the most obvious reason for the majority of us who chose to work elsewhere,” Ammar told This Week in Asia.
Like many of the state’s absent young voters, Ammar still thinks of Negeri Sembilan as home and is registered to vote there, despite living hundreds of kilometres away.


Just shy of 890,000 voters are registered to cast their ballots on Saturday, when 36 members of the state assembly will be elected from a crowded field of 103 candidates, with several locked in tight three-way races.
At the last election in 2023, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition picked up the most seats, at 17, with federal ally Barisan Nasional (BN) claiming three fewer and the remaining five going to the opposition Perikatan Nasional.
However, cracks have since started to show in the PH-BN alliance that delivered that year’s supermajority, with the two coalitions who share power in Putrajaya ditching the state-level seat-sharing pact they entered into last time.
BN’s landslide victory in last month’s Johor election rattled Anwar’s PH and Negeri Sembilan’s vote is being watched for signs of what the result might mean for the prime minister’s federal-level unity government.
‘Mobile electorate’
Negeri Sembilan’s state capital of Seremban is just an hour’s drive south of Kuala Lumpur, about 60km (37 miles) away.
That short distance and the big difference in wages are often enough to draw people away. As of December, the median monthly salary in Kuala Lumpur was 4,391 ringgit and just 2,664 ringgit in Negeri Sembilan, according to Malaysian government figures.
Some 2,600 people left the state for neighbouring Selangor – where the median monthly salary is 3,400 ringgit – between 2023 and 2024, according to the latest Migration Survey Report, released in December.

Still, Mohd Afzanizam Abdul Rashid, chief economist at Bank Muamalat Malaysia, cautioned against calling this outward migration “brain drain”.
“It is more accurately a reflection of an increasingly integrated regional labour market because higher wages in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor would naturally attract workers,” he said.
Voters who live and work in the capital region are often wealthier, more urbanised and less beholden to rallies, favours, house calls and the other machinery of local politics, according to political scientist Wong Chin Huat.
They were, in theory, more likely to judge political parties on performance than promises, he said – though ethnicity and religion would still influence how they vote.
“The geographical proximity to the capital region means Negeri Sembilan may be more integrated into federal politics compared to Johor,” Wong said, adding that voters were therefore more likely to “consider national issues in their choice at the ballot box”.
We have the talent, but many of us have to leave because the opportunities aren’t there
Syed Muzzafar Syed Azmi, Negeri Sembilan native
Voters being based outside the state has produced what Awang Azman Awang Pawi, a sociopolitical analyst at the University of Malaya, calls a “mobile electorate” shaped more by the cities they live in than the towns they vote in.
Reaching them involved a battle for attention increasingly being fought on social media, he said.
“The challenge is not merely to persuade them politically, but also to convince them that the election is important enough to justify the cost, time and inconvenience of travelling home to vote,” Awang said.
The retention test
The question hanging over Saturday’s vote, whoever wins, is whether the next state government can present its young people with a vision of the future compelling enough to convince them to stay.
Afzanizam thinks it can, if it works with the federal government on infrastructure investment, industrial policies, talent development and investment promotion, rather than against it.
By doing so, “Negeri Sembilan can build stronger industrial ecosystems that attract quality investments and create sustainable, high-paying jobs for its people”, he said.
For Syed Muzzafar Syed Azmi, a 28-year-old application engineer who left for the Klang Valley in search of better job prospects, the fix is simple: his home state needs more high-value industries that create jobs for young professionals.
“We have the talent, but many of us have to leave because the opportunities aren’t there,” he said. “The message that I have for the next government is that please appreciate the talents that you have in the state.”


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An aerial view of Port Dickson in Malaysia’s Negeri Sembilan state. Just shy of 890,000 voters are registered to cast their ballots in the state election on Saturday. Photo: Shutterstock

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Barisan Nasional supporters attend the announcement of the party’s slate for the Negeri Sembilan election. Photo: Facebook/barisanasional

Negeri Sembilan Chief Minister Aminuddin Harun speaks at a PH convention in May. Photo: Instagram/dsaminuddinharun

Voters in Muar wait in line to cast their vote at Saturday’s Johor state election. Photo: Handout

Barisan Nasional leader and Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi gives a speech during the coalition’s Negeri Sembilan nominee announcement. Photo: Facebook/barisanasional

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Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim speaks during a press conference  at the federal government office in Putrajaya on July 9. Photo: AFP

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Barisan Nasional leaders cheer at the command centre in Johor Bahru as unofficial results show the coalition leading in Johor’s state election on July 11. Photo: Iman Muttaqin Yusof

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Increasingly urbanised and immune to local patronage, young voters lured away by better pay could decide the vote’s outcome


Increasingly urbanised and immune to local patronage, young voters lured away by better pay could decide the vote’s outcome.


Malaysia’s ‘mobile electorate’ could swing Negeri Sembilan state poll

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Increasingly urbanised and immune to local patronage, young voters lured away by better pay could decide the vote’s outcome

Increasingly urbanised and immune to local patronage, young voters lured away by better pay could decide the vote’s outcome