SHAH ALAM, Nov 15 — Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali is predicted to face a crushing defeat against Pakatan Harapan’s (PH) Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari in Gombak in the coming November 19 general election, according to a recent survey.

The survey conducted by Institut Darul Ehsan (IDE), a Selangor government-linked think-tank, predicted that PH would win with 80,502 votes, compared to PN with 34,597 votes, while BN’s candidate Datuk Megat Zulkarnain Omardin is expected to come in third place with 23,927 votes.

Another 19,543 votes are unaccounted for, pointing towards fence sitters supporting the other two candidates in the constituency — Gerakan Tanah Air’s Aziz Jamaludin Mohd Tahir and independent Zulkifli Ahmad.

The survey drew its conclusion from predicting that 76.97 per cent of the overall 206,015 eligible voters in Gombak would come out to cast their ballots.

IDE conducted the study by surveying over 600 respondents in 43 federal constituencies and then running simulations to get their predictions.

Meanwhile, IDE executive manager Prof Datuk Mohammad Redzuan Othman, defended these kinds of surveys’ ability to be accurate despite the number of survey respondents being much smaller than the actual number of voters in an area.

"There are those among us that are not confident with the results of studies... we always hear people asking how a survey with 1,200 respondents can predict correctly when Malaysia has over 30 million citizens.

"They do not understand the sophisticated levels of knowledge that is available today,” he said during a press conference here.

He said that the studies can be accurate if the correct methods are used, including getting a pool of respondents that is representative of the population in each district, conducting the surveys face-to-face and using the right formulas to calculate the results.

He added that IDE had followed all the above criteria to the letter, adding that quality survey results are expensive — costing IDE some RM70 per person — which is one of the factors that limited the number of respondents they can study.

Yesterday, BN chairman Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi rubbished a survey result that claimed PN was likely to beat BN in all seats with over 70 per cent Malay voters.

He said that the survey was "propaganda” created to benefit BN’s enemies and questioned how a survey of 1,500 respondents could truly represent the 21 million eligible voters in the country.