Here's an excerpt from my upcoming book chapter on Media and GE14 (14th General Election). The gist of the chapter is basically in the final paragraph. -- GE14 was reportedly to have scored a series of records in the history of Malaysian election, such as the first ever electoral win by the opposition, the oldest Prime Minister elected – and re-elected – into office, the first woman Deputy Prime Minister and the youngest cabinet minister. Apart from that, the other record was the rise of opinion polling and political forecasting “industry”. Unlike the United States, where one can easily find dozens of opinion polling results and forecasts by the media and research institutions, the trend of conducting opinion polls during election picked up rather late in Malaysia or that some of the polling conducted were only meant for internal consumption, such as those prepared by government agencies and political parties. According to Malaysia’s leading scholar in public opin...