Cur­tis Williams

cu­rits.williams@guardian.co.tt

With a mere 11 days to go be­fore the 2020 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, a poll com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed and con­duct­ed by HHB and As­so­ciates shows that the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has a clear lead over its main ri­val, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), in the cru­cial mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of Moru­ga/Table­land.

The seat in South East Trinidad is con­sid­ered cru­cial for both par­ties in the race to White­hall, as it has changed hands in the last two gen­er­al elec­tions, with the par­ty win­ning it al­so even­tu­al­ly form­ing the gov­ern­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the poll, which has a mar­gin of er­ror of 6 per cent, the PNM is clear­ly in the lead al­though its stan­dard-bear­er, Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters has high neg­a­tives for vot­ers.

12 Table 12-DISLIKE ABOUT

The poll asked 200 reg­is­tered vot­ers if there was a gen­er­al elec­tion on Au­gust 10, 2020, whom they would vote for. With re­spect to which par­ty they would vote for, 34% re­port­ed the PNM and 23% the UNC. How­ev­er, a whop­ping 27 per cent said they were un­sure whom they would vote for and whichev­er par­ty is able to get those un­de­cid­ed could win the seat. Eleven per cent of the re­spon­dents re­fused to say whom they would sup­port.

The PNM's lead over the UNC is based more on the par­ty's strength in the con­stituen­cy and not on the can­di­date it chose, ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey.

In terms of favoura­bil­i­ty, 39 per cent of the re­spon­dents found the UNC's Michelle Ben­jamin as "favourable". This is nine per­cent­age points high­er than those rat­ing the PNM's Pe­ters as "favourable". Pe­ters' favoura­bil­i­ty rat­ing stood at 30 per cent. What could be wor­ry­ing for the PNM go­ing for­ward is that a high 37 per cent saw Pe­ters as un­favourable while Ben­jamin's neg­a­tives were much low­er at 17 per cent.

Ac­cord­ing to the poll, the UNC's can­di­date out­per­forms the PNM's can­di­date with re­spect to 'do­ing a good job' (29% for Ben­jamin as op­posed to 20% for Pe­ters).

UNC candidate for Moruga/Tableland Michelle Benjamin speaks to a resident during walkabout in the constituency earlier this month.

COURTESY MICHELLE BENJAMIN FACEBOOK PAGE

When it comes to car­ing for peo­ple, Ben­jamin al­so out­paced Pe­ters with 39% of the re­spon­dents say­ing she cared for peo­ple as op­posed to 34% for Pe­ters.

The vot­ers in Moru­ga/Table­land were al­so asked what they dis­liked about the can­di­dates and Pe­ters' main prob­lems seem to be that he is per­ceived as be­ing un­car­ing about peo­ple (19%) and that he does noth­ing (17%).

Look­ing at Ben­jamin, her main prob­lem was al­so the per­cep­tion that she does not care about peo­ple (27%). Iron­i­cal­ly, her per­ceived lack of car­ing for peo­ple is high­er than that of Pe­ters al­though he has over­all high­er neg­a­tives.

What are the things that the vot­ers in this rur­al con­stituen­cy con­sid­er the most im­por­tant is­sues that in­flu­ence how they will vote come Au­gust 10, 2020? For con­stituents, in­fra­struc­ture (96%) was the main dri­ver fol­lowed by un­em­ploy­ment (95%) and youth train­ing and de­vel­op­ment (95%).

1-4 Demographic of Poll

Sit­u­at­ed as it is on the coast­line, the vot­ers iden­ti­fied is­sues of il­le­gal Venezue­lan im­mi­grants (69%) and Cor­rup­tion (65%) as low­er on their list in terms of what will af­fect their vote, with Let­ting For­eign Na­tion­als Come Home (53%) last on the list.

With decades as a na­tion­al fig­ure, the PNM can­di­date - Pe­ters - is, not sur­pris­ing­ly, bet­ter known (84%) in the con­stituen­cy than the UNC's Ben­jamin (77%), ac­cord­ing to the HHB and As­so­ciates poll.

The find­ings were based on a strat­i­fied ran­dom sam­ple of 200 elec­tors (those reg­is­tered to vote) and was drawn from the con­stituen­cy. The polling di­vi­sions (PDs) were grouped by "loy­al­ty" to the UNC/PNM. Loy­al PDs were de­fined as those in which the win­ning par­ty had a dif­fer­ence from the los­er of 15% or greater. All oth­er PDs were deemed to be "mar­gin­al". This al­lowed HHB and As­so­ciates to se­lect small­er sam­ples from “loy­al” polling di­vi­sions and larg­er sam­ples from “mar­gin­al” di­vi­sions.

PNM candidate for Moruga/Tableland Winston ‘Gypsy’ Peters chats with residents during a walkabout in his constituency.

COURTESY WINSTON PETERS FACEBOK PAGE

Face to face in­ter­views were utilised and the mar­gin of er­ror was 6%. The de­mo­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sam­ple with re­spect to age, gen­der, race and re­li­gion re­flect the poll­ster's es­ti­mate of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the con­stituen­cy as a whole.

9 Table 9 AWARENESS

10 Table 10 FAVOURABLE

13 Table 13- VOTING

14 Table 14 VOTE FOR-01