KUALA LUMPUR: MCA has pledged to continue to work towards winning over the Chinese community, in spite of polls which claimed that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's popularity among the Chinese was waning.
MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek (pic) said the party was not influenced by poll findings, as such results are always influenced by past events.
"We are not influenced by poll numbers in the sense that when polls are down, we should all close shop, or when polls are up, we all should go to Genting to celebrate. We don't behave like that," he said.
"It's just like any other finding. One has to read it, one has to know how the poll was conducted and the events before the poll," said Dr Chua, who stressed it did not mean that he dismissed polls.
"I am saying that you have to take it in the light of events unfolding recently," he said.
He said people get influenced by events and the results could indicate that there was something that had upset the ethnic Chinese population.
"Polls go up and down. We have our good days, we have our bad days," said Dr Chua, who had earlier said that a poll conducted last month had shown that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's approval rating had gone up to 69 per cent among all races.
"It is like a relationship between husband and wife. There are days which you feel that you really love each other, there are days where you just wonder if you made the right choice to get married in the first place," he continued.
He was commenting on the results of a June 1 survey conducted by Merdeka Centre among voters in Peninsular Malaysia.
The results showed that the prime minister's approval rating had declined by 19 per cent among ethnic Chinese voters from 56 per cent in Feb to 37 per cent in May.
It also showed that last month, only half of households earning between RM3,000 to RM5,000 a month approved of Najib, down from 68 per cent in February.
However, according to the poll, Najib's overall approval rating only suffered a slight decline to 65 per cent from 69 per cent over the same period of time.
Meanwhile, the same survey found that only 48 per cent of respondents said they were happy with Najib's government, a figure that has remained unchanged since February.