The recent survey conducted by Merdeka Centre revealing that support for Najib as prime minister had dipped indeed resulted in a predictable reaction from BN to question the validity of its survey results.

Rais, for one, at least questioned the methodology and compared it with the Information Department’s survey that asked 50,000 respondents, which is, in reality, a very daunting task.

While the only difference between the two survey methods is the number of respondents (1,000 for Merdeka Centre), it is true that the one with more respondents should be less prone to error in estimating the opinion of the Malaysian population.

Besides that, Rais questioned if Merdeka Centre covered different sub population of Malaysians (rural, Indians in context, etc). His claims are baseless and is one who did not read the survey report before hand. Indeed, Merdeka Centre had employed the ‘random stratified sampling’, which is commonly used in a heterogenous population to reduce bias during sampling.

In their sample, they have a good reflection of the Malaysian population in terms of race, religion, gender, age, education level, household income, etc.

Given that the Information Department and Merdeka Centre methods differ in the number of respondents, I would give a thumbs up to the former with some caution. This is because, the Information Department is a government department.

Imagine you were to receive a call and the operator introduced him/herself as a representative from the government conducting a survey on Najib’s popularity, how would you respond?

Quite a number of them who fear that the government will trace their answer to their home would either lie or refuse to participate. In other words, no matter how well the sample reflects the Malaysian population, how huge the sample size is, there will be a response bias.

It is like your colleague asking your opinion on how well his/her presentation is, and you reply tactfully “not too bad”, even though you were cursing away during the presentation.

Technical disputes aside, I do remember vividly that Merdeka Centre did report that Najib’s popularity was gaining momentum, which received praises from BN and saying the people are returning to support them.

Indeed, the survey conducted by the Information Department and this classic pattern of reaction from BN is like the tailors telling the emperor that his clothes are awesome. But then again, we have yet to see the emperor walk out with his new, awesome clothes for the public to see. Indeed, I can’t wait for that day to come.