By-election campaign and voter perception of government policies: A case study of the Kajang state legislative assembly (N25), Selangor

A by-election may provide a platform for trecking short term trends of an electorate’s thinking. The 2014 Kajang by-election was held to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Mr. Lee Chin Cheh , the assemblyman from the People Justice Party (PKR). The purpose of this study is to analyse campaign issues and voters’ perceptions of state and federal policies in the 2014 Kajang (N25) by-election. Primary data were gathered from 300 randomly sampled respondents of 16 polling districts in the Kajang state assembly, and analysed using the SPSS programme. The findings revealed that manifestos and candidate criteria were the most influential voting factors during the campaign period. Overall, the perception of the state and the federal government policies was positive but voters did expect economic issues, in particular, rising prices of goods and employment opportunities to be better addressed by authorities for their living standard and quality of life to be improved. The Kajang by-election also saw the preservation of the status quo by according victory to the PKR candidate. This could be due to the still fresh impress of the 2013 general election.