BN Youth report shows most young voters undecided

Both BN and Pakatan are racing to sign up unregistered voters, most of whom are youths. — file pic

KUALA LUMPUR, July 20 — The Barisan Nasional (BN) Youth today presented a report to the prime minister over its survey that found three in five Malaysian youths were undecided with their vote.

BN Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin and his BN Youth Lab team submitted the report which also contained policy proposals and results of the survey to Datuk Seri Najib Razak at the Prime Minister’s Office this afternoon.

“We’ll be presenting it to the public via a town hall meeting with the prime minister very soon,” Khairy told The Malaysian Insider after submitting the report to the prime minister

He later said the town hall meeting will be at 3pm on August 20, with those interested having to register through the BN Youth Lab’s Facebook account.

Khairy said the BN chairman was “happy with the analysis and many of the suggestions”.

The series of surveys were conducted nationwide between March and June by the BN Youth Lab programme through telephone calls, social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and polls to detect relevant issues and problems affecting the Malaysian youth. It said a majority were not political party supporters, with 62 per cent undecided on their vote.

The major concerns voiced by the interviewees were employment, education, rising cost of living and public transportation. Most of these concerns pushed Malaysians to hand four states and 82 federal seats to the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) in Election 2008.

Both coalitions are now racing to sign up the 4.4 million unregistered voters in the country, comprising mainly youths. The DAP is the leading political party registering new voters ahead of the 13th general election, and has helped PR register two voters to BN’s one for the first half of 2010.

According to the BN Youth Lab, its survey also discovered that 30 per cent of the 1,000 youths surveyed are worried with the country’s current situation while 50 per cent are unhappy with the rising crime rate in Malaysia.

It reported that around 65 per cent of respondents felt the country was on the right track against the 30 per cent concerned over its future.

The survey said more were most concerned about employment/career (66 per cent), beating out children’s education and future (20 per cent), and cost of living (12 per cent).

Apart from the crime rate, the respondents were also dissatisfied about public transport (22 per cent), housing (10 per cent) and education (13 per cent).

The top most aspirations for those surveyed were economic progress (33 per cent) and freedom of expression (24 per cent), as opposed to transparency (19 per cent), religious tolerance (14 per cent) and race-related policies (7 per cent).