• UPDATED 10.06PM | Added an explanation from Citrine One on the objectives of the survey.

Former Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin is the “most popular and trusted” opposition leader, according to an opinion poll, which made headlines in several local media.

Citrine One Sdn Bhd, which collaborated with Callmark Solutions Sdn Bhd, also published the demography of their survey.

However, this highlighted a problem in terms of whether the results are representative of the Malaysian populace.

For starters, the 1,115 respondents comprised of only 29 percent Malays, 34 percent Chinese, 24 percent Indians and 13 percent others. This breakdown is not even close to the national demography or that of any state.

According to the Department of Statistics, the population estimate of citizens for 2019 are 69.1 percent Bumiputera, 23 percent Chinese, 6.9 percent Indians and one percent others.

Furthermore, more than half of the respondents or 58 percent were from Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.

On the other hand, the representation for respondents in states such as Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang were only one percent respectively while East Malaysia made up seven percent.

'Poll was not funded by any party'

At a press conference to announce the findings in Kuala Lumpur today, Citrine One managing partner Ivylnn Yap admitted that the survey was not representative of the entire electorate.

“This survey does not represent the entire nation,” she conceded.

Yap (photo) also stressed that Citrine One had not been funded by any party to conduct the poll.

In a statement later in response to Malaysiakini's report, Citrine One managing partner Sharves Bala said the survey was not intended to be a political analysis, nor was it intended to gauge respondent's voting preferences.

"Our survey was purely to gauge the effectiveness of the communications strategy deployed by the opposition parties and leaders. The measurements were based on communications elements only as that is our area of expertise. This is not a political analysis or a survey to understand the respondents voting preferences by any means.

"The article attempts to qualify our survey demographics by comparing it to a political survey which was not our intention or objective as we were looking at the communications perspective only.

"The mention of the absence of the voting status of respondents was noted in the article. The voting status of the respondents was not a prerequisite to our survey as we focused on how the respondents thought the opposition parties and leaders communicated," she said.

According to Citrine One's press release on the survey, under the heading "Khairy races ahead as most popular, most trusted opposition leader", said 80 percent of the respondents gave him higher than the average score of five to eight.

Respondents were asked to rate several opposition leaders on a scale of one to eight, with one being the least popular and eight the most popular.

Of the total respondents, 40 percent picked him as there top choice with a score of "8". Coming in second in terms of popularity was former premier Najib Abdul Razak, who is now battling a slew of court charges related to the 1MDB scandal, with 36 percent.

At third place with 10 percent was PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang.

"Khairy's position was further sealed when respondents also stated him as the most trusted opposition leader in an open-ended question with 170 mentions out of 357 respondents who answered the question," the statement said.

Some 33 percent of respondents said being “vocal” was the top reason they voted for their most popular opposition leader.

Respondents' voting status not established

The statement also included a quote from Yap, which read: “KJ’s popularity and trustworthiness signal the days where the head of parties gaining most popular votes are gone.”

"The people seemed to move towards voting based on how vocal the leader is as well as their clarity of thoughts while communicating and being consistent with their communication.

"Moreover, the period the survey was conducted was when KJ was actually silent after Dato’ Seri Najib (Abdul Razak) became the advisor to Umno," she added.

However, the survey, conducted between Sept 13 and Oct 3, did not establish whether the respondents were voters or not.

The survey also found that Umno was the “most popular” opposition party among 30 percent of respondents.

PAS was second at 13 percent while MCA and Gerakan tied for third place at seven percent.

The survey said its methodology includes "ground survey forms dissemination, email blasting to media practitioners and corporate players as well as Google forms dissemination, online and offline."

On its website, Citrine One describes itself as a firm that helps clients achieve "the right share of voice in their targeted media and markets."

"Our team of media and marketing communications specialists and consultants has the ability to position our clients' company/business or their products prominently to the media and to their markets, using selective, effective and integrated communications tools," it added.