COMMENT | ‘Saving the country’ and ‘setting Malaysia free’ may motivate many workers to take leave to vote next week. But it will take more than catchy phrases to set the country free from an unlimited term government.

It needs radically stronger emotions and catastrophic events to refire the ‘reformasi’ fervour of September 1998.

Elections today are effectively won by strategic social media management, big data analytics and powerful imageries manipulated by keyboard warriors.

While public sentiment is cautiously optimistic that the GE14 will tip towards the Opposition, social media narratives, party sites and partisan online news coverage underscore the uncertainty of an effective alternative to caretaker prime minister Najib Abdul Razak in an unpredictable election outcome.

The Dr Mahathir Mohamad-Najib contest is as uncertain as voter behaviour is unpredictable, especially among millennial voters in a gerrymandered system, where voting is not compulsory.

This uncertainty often gets in the way of predicting election results, even if big data analysis and statistical modelling have reduced the margin of error. Remember the Clinton-Trump election and the Brexit referendum in 2016?

Indeed, many voters in this GE14 are as undecided or disinterested as many are discontented and angry. It’s a worry that those who fail to vote may just decide the final outcome.

Past statistical studies of voting trends show that voters generally fall into these categories – the party loyalists, the issue-based voters and those who have given up on the system. Where do you fit in?...