Richard?Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is trail­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley in ap­proval rat­ing among con­stituents of the mar­gin­al San Fer­nan­do West, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est poll con­duct­ed last week by Louis Bertrand of H.H.B & As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed. Some 300 adults were polled in face-to-face in­ter­views.

The poll was com­mis­sioned by the Guardian Me­dia Ltd and is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed in eight mar­gin­al seats in prepa­ra­tion for the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion due no lat­er than Sep­tem­ber 17.

In the first poll re­leased on the Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy last week Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Row­ley were close but in the lat­est poll, con­duct­ed last week in San Fer­nan­do West, Row­ley, who re­ceived an ap­proval rat­ing from 58 per cent of those polled "moved ahead of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in terms of ap­proval in the con­stituen­cy of San Fer­nan­do West." The PM re­ceived a 49 per cent ap­proval rat­ing.

Bertrand's poll said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ac­cept­abil­i­ty as Prime Min­is­ter stood at 30 per cent, which "is al­most iden­ti­cal with the ac­cept­abil­i­ty of Row­ley as Prime Min­is­ter." He got 29 per cent. It al­so showed that "30 per cent find Row­ley 'ac­cept­able with reser­va­tions' as com­pared to 24 per cent for Per­sad-Bisses­sar."

Tu­na­puna and San Fer­nan­do West are cur­rent­ly rep­re­sent­ed by For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan re­spec­tive­ly. They are both from the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, which is one of the mem­ber units of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion led by Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

The poll found crime to be the "most crit­i­cal is­sue" for the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do West, while cor­rup­tion ranked as the fourth most im­por­tant.

Bertrand said one of the is­sues ex­am­ined in the poll was the is­sue of which par­ty could solve the ma­jor na­tion­al is­sues.

It showed that the vast ma­jor­i­ty, 72 per cent of those in­ter­viewed, "could not iden­ti­fy a par­ty which could solve the prob­lem of cor­rup­tion at the na­tion­al lev­el."

The poll re­vealed that "for the top is­sues iden­ti­fied, crime was the on­ly one where an iden­ti­fied po­lit­i­cal par­ty (PNM) ex­ceed­ed the 'don't know' cat­e­go­ry."

Deal­ing with the in­cum­bent MP, the poll found that 56 per cent of the con­stituents knew Seep­er­sad-Bachan as their MP. It added, how­ev­er, that "on­ly 18 per cent have a favourable opin­ion of her as an MP."

The poll showed that the ma­jor lo­cal is­sues af­fect­ing con­stituents in San Fer­nan­do West were in­fra­struc­ture, un­em­ploy­ment, crime, gov­er­nance and ris­ing prices. The na­tion­al is­sues af­fect­ing San Fer­nan­do West in or­der of pri­or­i­ty are crime, un­em­ploy­ment, health care, cor­rup­tion and ris­ing prices.