GE15: Nothing beats door-to-door strategy during campaign period
SHAH ALAM - Door-to-door strategy or house-to-house strategy is the most effective strategy for the 15th General Election (GE15) especially considering the two-week campaign period set by the Election Commission (EC).
Political analyst and lecturer from Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) Associate Professor Mohd Azizuddin Mohd Sani said whether two weeks was enough as the campaign period depended on many factors.
He said the problem would be if it was sufficient for the candidates to campaign in the community especially if they apply the house-to-house strategy which has been proven very effective.
“I think that is a big issue because as we know, although we talked about it on social media and everything but through my engagement with the voters, they want to see the candidates.
“House-to-house campaigns are very effective and that is why political parties had complained when the EC banned such strategy during the Melaka and Johor state elections,” he said during Sinar Daily’s Wacana English Edition programme entitled “GE15: Dates are set, are you ready?” on Friday.
Besides Mohd Azizuddin, BowerGroupAsia senior analyst Arinah Najwa and UiTM Associate Professor Soo Wincci also appeared as panellists during the show while Zoraya Vadillio was the moderator.
The show discussed about GE15 and the voter turnout as well as the contesting candidates and campaigning period.
Azizuddin said two weeks will be enough for the state constituency, but not the parliamentary constituency because there were hundreds or thousands of voters in one constituency, so it will be unlikely that the parliamentary candidates will be able to meet all the voters in the electoral districts.
However, considering other factors such as the floods and the monsoon season, he said two weeks was sufficient.
Meanwhile, Soo said she was of the view that being intensive on social media was an effective campaigning strategy, but the possibility of the party winning would be higher if they were to implement house-to-house strategy.
“I think being intensive on social media is effective but if they have an offline opportunity to do the house-to-house strategy, they might as well go for it because the more ways you have, the more chances for you to win and prove yourself,” she said.
She also said whether the two weeks were enough for parties to campaign did not matter since there was no other choice rather than to accept what has been decided.
“There is no choice, it’s like an exam and they just have to squeeze everything in.
“You can see stuff being thrown out every hour and you are going to see their campaigning style as well.
“It’s good to see how well they can do it in two weeks and as things happened like the floods, even if you prolong the campaigning period, it might not be effective,” she said.
She added that a shorter campaigning period will not pose any issues if they did their campaigns right and used the best strategy.
She said this just proved that it was all about what they have done for at least the past ten or five years, something that was already in their track record so the people just need to be smart and check out the candidates before they vote.
Soo said a shorter campaign period could be a good thing for the people since they could see the true colours of the parties.
“I think throwing in a surprise like this to the parties is good because then their true colours will come out instead of a long campaign period where they will be throwing too many empty promises to the point that we will wonder whether it is true or not,” she added.
