KUALA LUMPUR, 30th June 2009 - Malaysian youth in general seem to be well informed on current issues but they
remain politically disconnected as found in a nationwide opinion poll released today.

The poll also found out that the youth of Malaysia feel that government decisions have a lot of impact in their daily lives but there is little that their votes can do to influence the government.

The opinion poll, National Youth Survey 2008, was conducted by the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research, with funding support from The Asia Foundation, to gauge youth perceptions of lifestyle, current issues, values, politics, and their own levels of civic and social involvement.

The poll was carried out between 13th November and 9th December 2008 and a total of 2,518 randomly selected Malaysian youth between the age of 20 and 35 years old were interviewed by telephone. Respondents were selected on the basis of random stratified sampling along the national population profile and specifically proportional to gender, ethnicity and state of residence.