Abstract

Election studies in Malaysia are not a new academic discipline; it has been conducted by a number of experienced scholars, particularly those from the field of media and communication whose focus was analysing and understanding the behaviours of the Malaysian voters. In conducting election studies, a researcher will select a method that can be used to measure the impact of media, campaign strategies, media selection or other factors that can influence voters’ decisions. Therefore, the survey is one of the most popular methods used in political communication studies. Meanwhile, in Malaysia research on by-elections has become significant and is always frequently carried out by researchers in this field. Our study in the by-election in the parliamentary constituency of Sg. Besar has demonstrated that with a guided research framework, findings of election studies can be used to predict an election result and as one of the campaign strategies to win the election.