Huan Cheng Guan, president of the Centre for Political Awareness Malaysia (CPAM), has clearly not read the summarized report released by Merdeka Center. The said report has duly summarized their sampling methods as stratified random sampling to best reflect the sentiments of the voters in peninsula Malaysia. Moreover, Merdeka Center reported the demographics of their 1,005 sampled participants.

 

It is standard practice in surveys to take a fraction of a population to estimate the sentiments of the population, not unless one has unlimited resources to evaluate every single person. Indeed, Merdeka Center has consistently done this and it was ironic for Huan to criticize the sample size while acknowledging Merdeka Center’s past findings that are favourable to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s ratings.

It begs the question if Huan himself is biased instead of Merdeka Center. Clearly, Huan is deluded by confirmation bias. This delusion is common when attempting to “think fast” as described by the Nobel Laureate, Daniel Kahneman – the consequences of thinking fast? Making bad decisions such as writing a laughable letter to Malaysiakini.

On another note, there is nothing exciting about Merdeka Center’s recent findings as the surrounding circumstances are undoubtedly the perfect storm against the general population. It would be extremely exciting to know that the population actually approves the slew of rate hikes and cost of living.

Nonetheless, based on these findings, the government has to work uphill towards showing us, the people, that the slew of actions taken will encourage social mobility and better lives for the poor.