Demo Page: http://jsfiddle.net/marcobehr/p99V5/

Testet on 1.8.2

When cloning a select field ...

<select id="testSelection">
        <option value="a">a</option>
        <option value="b">b</option>
        <option value="c">c</option>
    </select>

... and accessing its selected option after cloning, its selected value becomes reseted (always is equal to its first option).

var clone = jQuery("#testSelection").clone();

Now, when getting is selected option ...

var selCloneText = jQuery(clone).find(":selected").text();

... its always equal to the first option field, no matter what has been selected before.

Perhaps its a bug? For me it seems to be, because accessing radio fields in a similar way works as aspected.

Thanks!