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A survey conducted by Institut Darul Ehsan, a government think tank based in Selangor, found that 85 per cent of respondents disapprove of Muhyiddin Yassin continuing as Malaysia's prime minister.

Of the respondents, only 12 per cent wanted him to remain as prime minister and whereas three per cent were not sure.

The survey, titled Citizens' Perception Survey, was conducted online from July 11 to 18 this year.

The think tank added that a total of 7,986 participants responded to the survey across the Malaysian peninsular, as well as Sabah and Sarawak.

The profile of the respondents cuts across gender, age, ethnicity and political party affiliation.

Opinions uniform across age groups

The breakdown of the survey by age showed that 88.2 per cent of those aged between 20 and 29 years old rejected Muhyiddin as their prime minister. This is the highest proportion by age.

Meanwhile, 78.6 per cent of those aged 60 t0 65 years old have expressed the same view. While the percentage of disapproval is the lowest among all age groups, it still takes up a majority.

17.6 per cent of respondents in this group wanted Muhyiddin to remain as prime minister, whereas only 6.6 per cent of respondents in the age group of 20 29 years held this view.

In general, the support for Muhyiddin not to be prime minister is consistent across all age groups at about more than 80 per cent.

Other ethnicities support Muhyiddin more

Broken down by ethnicity, disapproval towards Muhyiddin as prime minister for the Malays, Chinese and Indians were at 84.2 per cent, 84.9 per cent, and 87.8 percent respectively.

As for Sabah and Sarawak, 72.7 per cent rejected Muhyiddin, while 22.7 per cent wanted him to remain as prime minister.

Similar to previous sentiments

The research centre mentioned that the results of this survey are in line with a previous survey it had conducted earlier this year.

Titled Mood of the Nation, the survey was released back in March, and was conducted online between Feb. 19 and 28. A total of 8,352 respondents participated in the survey.

46 per cent of the respondents believed that Muhyiddin should resign as prime minister as he failed to get majority support whereas 19 per cent of the respondents felt that he should remain in office until the end of his term.

29 per cent of the respondents agreed that Muhyiddin should dissolve the parliament to hold general elections.

Muhyiddin under fire

Confidence in Muhyiddin as prime minister has dropped sharply among the people as he was thought to have failed to manage the Covid-19 pandemic.

This could be seen from a coalition of non-governmental organisations, who claim to be representing the Malaysian people, urging Muhyiddin and his Cabinet to step down, Free Malaysia Today reported.

Muhyiddin has declared a state of emergency on Jan. 12 to curb the spread of the virus. However, daily case numbers kept increasing and by yesterday (July 28), it reached a record high of 17,405 cases, according to The Star.

Earlier this month, UMNO withdrew its support for Muhyiddin and his coalition government, and Pakatan Harapan forced him to step down as prime minister, Malay Mail reported.

Top image by Mohd Rasfan/AFP via Getty Images