Previous Merdeka Center’s opinion poll results will usually come out in the Star or NST, but this time I did not read about it. This news was covered in Malaysiakini. Not surprising that it was missing in main stream media because it shows that only 42% of the polled people said that approved/satisfied with Prime Minister Badawi. This is even lower than pre-elections times and a huge drop from the 91% popularity he had in 2004. This means more people are unhappy than happy.

Few areas were covered in the poll, among them Najib’s suitabilty as next PM, satistifaction with BN and PR government fulfilling election promises, view on economy, and general outlook on the country’s direction.

The opinion poll, 2nd Quarter 2008 Peninsular Malaysia Voter Opinion Survey was between 4th and 14th July 2008 to gauge voters’ perceptions of current issues, the state of the economy and leadership. Some extracts from the summary:

The survey reveals a large majority also indicated that they perceived the country was going in the wrong direction – based on only 28% who felt satisfied with the way things are going in the country. This may be in part due to a deepening concern over the state of the economy as a majority (59%), were worried over economic related issues followed by 10% who cited political issues as being most important.

With respect to views on political parties and leaders, in two mutually exclusive questions, the survey found 44% of Peninsular Malaysia voters were satisfied with the Barisan Nasional while 57% report being satisfied with Pakatan Rakyat.

The poll also found 42% of voters reported satisfaction with Dato’ Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s performance as prime minister.

With respect to Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, the survey found that only 11% believed in the allegation of sexual misconduct while 66% agreed that it “was a politically motivated action to disrupt Anwar Ibrahim’s political career”. The survey also found that public confidence towards institutions likely to be involved in handling the matter to be
relatively low with not more than 33% citing confidence.

According to the center, the Peninsular Malaysia wide telephone survey of 1030 randomly selected Malaysian registered voters was carried out between 4th and 14th July 2008, and funded via internally generated resources. Respondents were selected using the random,stratified sampling method and structured along the national electorate profile and specifically proportional to gender, ethnicity, and state of residence.

Merdeka Center’s press release (PDF) is available on their website, but for those who are more visually inclined, Malaysiakini provided some nice graphics, but its good to read the full report to get a proper insight. So let’s have a look at them:

That means total of satisfied (very and somewhat) respondents (7+35) is 42%, total of dissatisfied  (very and somewhat) respondents is (37+17) is 54% and the balance 4% is no response/don’t know category.

That means for federal BN, total of satisfied (very and somewhat) respondents (8+36) is 44%, total of dissatisfied (very and somewhat) respondents is (38+16) is 54% and the balance 2% is no response/don’t know category.

For state PR, total of satisfied (very and somewhat) respondents (9+48) is 57%, total of dissatisfied (very and somewhat) respondents is (19+13) is 32% and the balance 11% is no response/don’t know category.

That means only 24% of respondents have positive things to say about the economy. 1 in 4 Malaysians surveyed by the poll.

Less than one third of the respondents are happy with the current situation. Those unhappy can be due to actions of both ruling government and the opposition.

Reader should note that the sampling is only 1030 and from Peninsular Malaysia.