Opinion Analysis of Twitter Users in Malaysia on Muhyiddin Yassin’s Dismissal

1. Background

On July 28th 2015 a new Cabinet line-up was announced by Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was absent from the new Cabinet. Zaid Hamidi replaced him for the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Mahdzir Khalid replaced him for the post of Minister of Education.

Muhyiddin being dropped from the Cabinet followed speculation that this would happen due to his remarks about 1MDB on Sunday, July 26th. He was reported to have asked for PM Najib to personally explain the 1MDB issue and answer the allegations by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) [1].

2. Our Analysis

We performed opinion-based analysis on 502 users based in Malaysia who tweeted about Muhyiddin and related terms on July 28th 2015. The margin of error is +/- 4.37%.

Users were selected based on their tweet content and activity during this period. Sampling was done per-state based on the current estimated user population.

Spammers, news agencies and accounts with automated tweets were not included in the sample.

From this dataset we analysed the individual Twitter user timelines to determine their opinion. This took their tweets, retweets and conversations into account.

Our goal was to gauge public reaction by Twitter users in Malaysia to the removal of Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin to see if they supported the decision.

Users who were tweeting about related topics (PM Najib; the Cabinet line-up) but not in response to Muhyiddin Yassin’s dismissal were not included in the sample. However we took note of what these users were saying for section 4 (Additional Opinions).

Based on this analysis we categorised users as belonging to one of the following categories:

1. Positive
2. Neutral
3. Negative (support Muhyiddin)

These were further divided into the following categories based on which party they chose to support/criticise:

1. Positive
2. Neutral
3. Negative (support Muhyiddin)
4. Negative (support Muhyiddin, critical of Najib)
5. Negative (support Muhyiddin, he must oppose Najib)

The results are shown in the following charts.