The Voters’ Choice and Hope in the 14th Malaysian General Election

Abstract

The 14th Malaysian General Elections (GE14) result has proven to be a good platform for democracy after the opposition coalition party successfully topple the ruling coalition party since the first election. This paper discusses a survey conducted four days before the GE14 nomination day announcement to measure the voters’ views and interests. The main two objectives are (i) to measure the voters’ choice of candidates’ characteristics; (ii) to examine the issues that are concerned the voters; and (iii) to discuss voting inclination prior to GE14. The methodology used is a cross-sectional survey conducted from 24 April until 25 April 2018 using a Google survey and distributed through WhatsApp and Facebook. This survey received an overwhelming response and managed to gather 1331 respondents. The survey has 21 items in four sections – demography, candidate characteristics, issues, and opinions on Malaysian politics. The findings portray that candidate characteristics preference has slightly changed from party-based voting to candidate personality.