It is very likely that there will be high voter turnout for the 15th general election (GE15) on Nov 19, despite talk of pervasive voter apathy in the country.
This is according to a recent national survey titled “Mood of the Nation”, jointly conducted by think-tank Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE), Japan’s Toyo University, and Universiti Selangor’s Institute of Electoral Studies and Advancement of Democracy (Iesad).
IDE executive director Mohammad Redzuan Othman said their survey data showed that 79 percent of respondents said they would vote in GE15, with only 4.6 percent against going to vote, while 16.4 percent were still unsure.
“In this survey, among the first things we asked is whether they would go out to vote.
“Clearly, the people said they will vote. It looks like the view that the rakyat are not interested in or bored of politics has no basis, based on our survey,” Redzuan said in a press conference at the IDE headquarters in Shah Alam today.
The survey was conducted two weeks before the start of the GE15 campaigning period, that is from Oct 21 to Nov 4.
It involved 2,423 respondents across all 165 parliamentary seats in Peninsular Malaysia that are representative of the country’s demographic in terms of sex, age, race, and political inclination.
The timeline of the survey shows the rakyat have been geared up to vote in the election even before campaigning began, he added.
Redzuan said there has traditionally been high voter turnout during general elections, despite the poor showing in the recent Malacca and Johor state elections.
Besides that, the survey also looked into what issues voters were more concerned about, as well as what factors affected whom they would vote for the most.
The top three issues voters were concerned about consistently across several age groups were the rising prices of goods, political instability, and corruption.
The rising prices of goods outstripped the other issues by a wide gap, Redzuan said, with 43.36 percent of respondents worried about the issue, followed by political instability at 18.7 percent and corruption at 10.75 percent.
While voters between 18 to 20 years old also showed concern over the state of democracy and reformation, those between 21 and 40 years old were also worried about job opportunities.
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Meanwhile, the main factors respondents said would affect their vote would be the respective parties’ electoral manifestos, followed by the economic situation and then, the candidates themselves.
The survey also tested the levels of support for specific political leaders and parties to win the GE15, though Redzuan stressed that this study was conducted before the campaigning period and thus, is volatile to the fast-changing nature of politics.
Their survey data shows that 31.5 percent of their respondents support PKR president Anwar Ibrahim as the prime minister post-GE15.
Caretaker prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob had 24.9 percent of the respondents’ support and Perikatan Nasional (PN) chairperson Muhyiddin Yassin was at 20.3 percent.
About 30.7 percent of respondents also said they would vote for Pakatan Harapan in GE15, closely followed by BN at 27.9 percent, and finally PN with 12.7 percent.
The remaining 28.7 percent said they were still undecided.
IDE is a Selangor government-funded think-tank established in 2015. - Mkini
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