How to get Selected Text from select2 when using

As of Select2 4.x, it always returns an array, even for non-multi select lists.

var data = $('your-original-element').select2('data')
alert(data[0].text);
alert(data[0].id);

For Select2 3.x and lower

Single select:

var data = $('your-original-element').select2('data');
if(data) {
  alert(data.text);
}

Note that when there is no selection, the variable ‘data’ will be null.

Multi select:

var data = $('your-original-element').select2('data')
alert(data[0].text);
alert(data[0].id);
alert(data[1].text);
alert(data[1].id);

From the 3.x docs:

data Gets or sets the selection. Analogous to val method, but works
with objects instead of ids.

data method invoked on a single-select with an unset value will return
null, while a data method invoked on an empty multi-select will return
[].