OCT 12 — I am unsure if I am recalling this accurately but in the back of my mind, amid cobwebs of vague memories, I somehow remember reading an Asimov short story in a stuffy old library at the Malay College in Kuala Kangsar. You will forgive me if it is not even Asimov’s writing. It may well be the work of some other science fiction author. What I do have vivid recollection is the plot of the story, however. From that story, I hope it may cause others to refrain from committing hasty generalisations.
The story is set some time in the far future, maybe on Earth, maybe on Trantor, or at some other place, I do not know. What is important is that the realm of human knowledge has expanded greatly. This includes in the field of statistics and, in particular, sampling methods used to ascertain public opinion.
Sampling methods used today in real life suffer from certain errors arising from randomness and uncertainty. Notice how each time a respectable polling agency reports the result of a survey, it includes the margins of error of the findings or, more accurately, the standard errors, along with the averages. In the science fiction story, statisticians of the future have developed a way to eliminate, fully, the errors associated with sampling.
In fact, the field of statistics in that fictional piece had reached a stage so advanced that the opinion of the public can be gauged accurately by simply sampling a person, who is a member of the public. In other words, all that is required to make a general inference about the society is just one data point.
A sample size of one and that is it.
One.
Only one.
1 Malaysia!
Oh my, I do not know how that gets in there.
Anyway, unfortunately in real life, the reliability of a sample and, therefore, the ability to generalise its statistics for inferential purposes decrease as the sample size decreases. We are still finding ourselves a long way from living a statistician’s wet dream.
Yet, all too often in Malaysia today, individuals are quick to generalise the result of a by-election to describe national mood. It is perhaps acceptable to make an inference out of a series of by-elections held within a certain timeframe but it is dangerous to make a claim that a by-election signals a countrywide trend. It is dangerous because it is misleading.
A by-election only gauges the opinion of a certain type of individuals and these individuals are certainly not representative of the whole country. The voters in Bagan Pinang, from instance, are quite different from voters of Manei Urai, Datok Keramat, Damansara Utama or Likas. Although the national issues that they care about may coincide, their attitude towards the same issues is not the same due to their worldviews. And then, there are local issues. It is definitely safe to say that the local issues that they face are different enough that the one-size-fits-all approach is doomed to failure.
These voters, taken as whole, may provide some concrete statistics on the direction of national politics but individually in isolation, they are not so helpful.
With respect to Bagan Pinang, there are many other differentiating factors that further make the result of this by-election unique to itself. As an example, not many areas have an army camp within its boundary. Another is its status as resort town, or rather, a resort town full of abandoned projects. Suffice to say, Bagan Pinang is not Malaysia.
Therefore, I have to disagree with sweeping statements made by many people after the by-election. In The Star, Tan Sri Isa Samad was quoted as saying: “The people of all races have spoken and this is an endorsement of the Prime Minister’s 1 Malaysia concept.” Umno deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said: “This is a significant victory and more importantly the people’s endorsement of the Prime Minister’s policies.”
Perhaps, the people they are referring to are restricted to the voters of Bagan Pinang only. If it refers to Malaysians as a whole, these two politicians and others who share a similar tendency to generalise in so grandly a manner will have a hard time rationalising trends in other areas.
This is not to say information from Bagan Pinang is worthless. It is not to say information that Bagan Pinang provides with national politics in mind is worthless. Rather, information from this by-election should be contextualised by taking into account several past and future by-elections held at different places if it is to make national sense. Without such contextualisation, the one data point of Bagan Pinang might as well be noise, or an outlier.
In the meantime, save a national election itself, the best barometers of national mood are countrywide surveys done properly. Unless, of course, we are living in a world created by that science fiction story.
At maddruid.com, Hafiz Noor Shams shares why he used to visit Bagan Pinang on yearly basis.
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The how, who or what, we will never know. Hopefully both parties would be able to better analyze further better strategies for the next GE.
And that is another story.