Post-Mortem: GE15 Election Poll Prediction

By Dr Kelvin Goh, CEO and founder of Vodus Research

6 years ago, when the world watched the pollsters’ failure to predict the outcome of the Brexit and US 2016 elections, I knew something was wrong with the traditional survey methods. I deep dived into the problem and created a solution that can gather market data and insights that are more accurately representative of the population.

This kickstarted my 6-year startup journey to reinvent surveys through our OMTOS survey technology, which surveys millions of online content consumers to gather insights that reflect the demographics of population more accurately.

We have tested and verified the accuracy of OMTOS by comparing our results with government statistics and financial numbers of our clients. However, one final test remains, which is to solve the original problem that kickstarted my journey. If we are able to accurately forecast an election, it means that we have created an ideal market research tool that could change the way we collect consumer data forever.

This opportunity came in November 2022 when Malaysia held its most competitive election in history, where three major parties: Pakatan Harapan (PH), Barisan Nasional (BN), Perikatan Nasional (PN), are competing to form the next government. Three-way elections are more unpredictable than a 2-way election, as smaller number of votes to sway the outcome of the election.

Comparing our result with other pollsters

We have compared our prediction (17 November report) with 3 other prominent pollsters: Merdeka Center (12 November report), EMIR Research (17 November report) and Invoke (16 November report). In terms of methodology, Merdeka Center used the telephone surveys, EMIR Research used mixed research methodology and extrapolated past election data, whereas Invoke did not disclose their methodology.

When comparing our key predictions with these pollsters, Vodus is the only pollster that predicted that the winning party, PH, will win less than 90 seats (83 vs the actual result of 82). All other research houses were bullish over PH’s performance, where Merdeka Center, EMIR Research, Invoke predicted that PH will win 90, 93, and 90 seats respectively.

In terms of the key candidate results, our data have accurately shown that Tun Mahathir, our longest serving ex-prime minister, will lose his seat at Langkawi to PN by a large margin, in which Invoke is the only other pollster that foresaw this. We are also the only pollster whose data have shown that the widely dubbed future prime minister of Malaysia, Khairy Jamaluddin, will fall short in his bid to win the Sungai Buloh election. Our data have also detected that Warisan will suffer great losses in GE15, whereas the other pollsters have predicted a rosier outcome.

Despite accurately predicting the key results, we failed to foresee the huge swing in BN votes to PN (runner-up of the election) in the rural Malay constituencies similarly to the other pollsters. Our data have shown that many of these rural Malay constituencies are tightly contested between BN and PN. Due to these constituencies having always voted for a BN member of parliament, we gave BN the win. We believe that a large percentage of these vote swing happened 2 days before the election day, in which our survey has ended by then. Hence, no pollster is able to detect this PN vote swing.

Conclusion

Our first attempt at predicting a general election using our proprietary OMTOS survey technology has proven to be successful, where Vodus is the most accurate pollster in predicting the key results of the Malaysian 15^th General Election. Nevertheless, we will continue to improve the accuracy of our insights by partnering with more online content publishers to cover a wider variety of demographic groups and further expand our sampling frame.

Election result prediction is widely seen as the best yardstick for measuring the accuracy of a market research methodology. From our GE15 election prediction, we have demonstrated that the high response rate, large sampling frame and sample size obtainable from our OMTOS survey technology is able to yield more accurate insights than the traditional survey methods. 

We hope that the success of our prediction signifies the beginning of a new era for market research where election polls and consumer insights are more accurate and reliable than ever before.