Identity Without Consolidation: Ethnic Competition and Electoral Fragmentation in Malaysia's 2025 Sabah State Election

Ethnic politics has always been the main feature of Malaysian politics, but the way it is mobilised differs across the country's territories. It is in the Borneo State of Sabah where ethnic politics reaches its most extreme expression, producing a level of electoral fragmentation that has persisted across every election cycle. Drawing on the 2025 Sabah state election, this article explains why fragmentation persists across all four constituency types, arguing that centrifugal forces produced a crowded field in which most seats were won with thin pluralities. Four factors explain why fragmentation keeps producing itself: personality-driven politics that builds loyalty to individual leaders rather than parties; the calculation by leaders to remain independent rather than subordinate themselves within a larger coalition; an open party system that continuously produces new entrants; and sub-ethnic diversity that sustains space for new challengers. Sabah illustrates a political system in which ethnic identity organises competition intensely but has never generated conditions for consolidation.