1981 Sabah state election
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All 48 seats in the Sabah State Legislative Assembly 25 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The 1981 Sabah state election was held between Monday, 23 March and Saturday, 28 March 1981. This was the fourth state election to take place. The Sabah State Legislative Assembly was dissolved on 21 February 1981, 2 months earlier than the expiry of the Assembly term on 26 April 1981. Candidates nomination took place on 7 March 1981.
In the election, BERJAYA Party led by Harris Salleh, an ally of federal government party Barisan Nasional (BN), won the election with a supermajority of 44 seats out of 48, and thus continued its governance of the state won since the last election on 1976. USNO, another component party of BN but opposition to BERJAYA on state level, created a coalition, Barisan Sabah, with PASOK and SCCP to fight BERJAYA. However the result were disastrous to the new coalition as they only won 4 seats; USNO reduced from 20 to 3 seats, SCCP winning one seat and PASOK none.