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 [].