SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

On the eve of Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion, Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) To­co/San­gre Grande can­di­date Roger Mon­roe is out front against Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) con­tender Nabi­la Greene in the bat­tle for the high­ly-con­test­ed seat.

The find­ings are con­tained in a re­cent poll con­duct­ed by HHB and As­so­ciates Ltd poll led by poll­ster Louis Bertrand.

The poll, com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia, showed Munroe was ahead of Greene by 13 per cent.

To­co/San­gre Grande was one of six mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies un­der­tak­en by the firm lead­ing up to the Au­gust 10 gen­er­al elec­tion.

The poll’s mar­gin of er­ror is six per cent.

In­ter­views were con­duct­ed with 200 reg­is­tered vot­ers in the con­stituen­cy on var­i­ous cat­e­gories rang­ing from ma­jor is­sues in­flu­enc­ing the vote, par­ty best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, gen­er­al progress of the coun­try and peo­ple, per­for­mance in the con­stituen­cy, as­sess­ment of can­di­dates, opin­ions of can­di­dates, rea­sons for the rat­ings, vot­ing in­ten­tions and vot­er switch­ing pat­terns.

UNC Toco/Sangre Grande candidate Nabila Greene speaks with a resident during a walkabout in Sangre Grande.

ABRAHAM DIAZ

Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign, both can­di­dates have been em­broiled in con­tro­ver­sy.

Three weeks ago, a video sur­faced on so­cial me­dia pur­port­ing to be Greene ly­ing on a bed be­ing show­ered with mon­ey by a male whose face was not seen. But ini­tial­ly, Greene, in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing a walk­a­bout in San­gre Grande, said if the per­son in the video turned out to be her, she saw noth­ing wrong with the clip. The fol­low­ing day, how­ev­er, Greene took to so­cial me­dia deny­ing she was the per­son in the video.

Re­cent­ly, TTPS Fraud Squad de­tec­tives re­opened their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions that Mon­roe al­leged­ly used an ex­pired pow­er of at­tor­ney to with­draw mon­ey from his grand­fa­ther Per­cy Thomas’ ac­count two days af­ter he (Thomas) died on Feb­ru­ary 7, 2015. While Mon­roe ad­mit­ted he made a mis­take in the mat­ter, he in­sist­ed his hands are clean.

This seat along the north­east­ern re­gion of Trinidad has been known as a PNM strong­hold for decades.

TOCO POLL TABLE 5

In 2002, the con­stituen­cy, which ini­tial­ly car­ried the name To­co/Man­zanil­la, was won by PNM can­di­date Roger Boynes.

Five years lat­er, PNM’s In­dra Sinanan Ojah-Ma­haraj emerged vic­to­ri­ous over UNC’s ri­val Keshore Satram.

The UNC fi­nal­ly took con­trol of the seat in 2010 when can­di­date Ru­pert Grif­fith cap­tured 9,325 votes to PNM’s Er­ic “Pink Pan­ther” Tay­lor, who net­ted 8,625 bal­lots.

In 2015, the seat went back in­to the PNM’s hands with Glen­da Jen­nings-Smith re­ceiv­ing 12,005 votes to the 8,101 elec­tors who sup­port­ed UNC’s can­di­date Brent San­cho.

The re­gion has a vot­ing pop­u­la­tion of over 30,000 and is re­gard­ed as a cru­cial seat for both par­ties at the polls.

Re­spon­dents were asked which par­ty they would vote for. The poll showed that “32 per cent” re­port­ed the PNM to the UNC’s “19 per cent.”

TOCO POLL TABLE 6

At the time of the poll, “24 per cent” were un­de­cid­ed, “11 per cent” re­fused to say which par­ty they would sup­port and “13 per cent” stat­ed they would re­frain from vot­ing.

The poll gave a 67 per cent “rel­a­tive­ly high” like­li­hood of vot­ing among elec­tors.

In terms of “favoura­bil­i­ty”, Mon­roe re­ceived a 45 per cent rat­ing to Greene’s 32 per cent. Al­so, more re­spon­dents were un­sure about Greene (60 per cent) when com­pared to Mon­roe’s (48 per cent).

How­ev­er, a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er per­cent­age of elec­tors (40 per cent) rat­ed Mon­roe as “car­ing about peo­ple than his UNC coun­ter­part (29 per cent)”, the poll stat­ed.

Vot­ers felt both can­di­dates were “tied” with re­spect to “do­ing a good job.”

On things dis­liked about the can­di­dates, re­spon­dents stat­ed “Mon­roe’s main prob­lems seem to be that he is per­ceived as not be­ing seen of­ten enough in the con­stituen­cy (39 per cent)”. Elec­tors felt that Greene on the oth­er hand “is not do­ing a good job (36 per cent).”

TOCO POLL TABLE 7

Re­gard­ing which can­di­date is more pop­u­lar, the sur­vey found that “Mon­roe is more well-known (76 per cent) in the con­stituen­cy than Greene (67 per cent).”

Look­ing at the per­for­mance of both par­ties, re­spon­dents gave the PNM a 47 per cent “good” rat­ing com­pared to the UNC’s 20 per cent. How­ev­er, 29 per cent felt the PNM had done a “bad” job to the UNC’s 34 per cent.

Com­par­ing their lives now to 2015, 32 per cent of vot­ers re­port­ed they were per­son­al­ly worse off. Some 37 per cent mean­while claimed that their per­son­al sit­u­a­tion had not changed, with 29 per cent say­ing they were bet­ter off.

Delv­ing deep­er in­to the cat­e­go­ry “vot­ing in­ten­tions”, the sur­vey found that race con­tin­ues to be im­por­tant in this con­stituen­cy.

“The ma­jor dif­fer­ence re­lates to those clas­si­fied as mixed/oth­er where 42 per cent in­tend to vote for the PNM as com­pared with the 15 per cent who in­tend to vote for the UNC. In­ter­est­ing­ly, the Afro/In­do dif­fer­ences are less sig­nif­i­cant.

TOCO POLL TABLE 8

For ex­am­ple, (34 per cent) of Afro-Tri­nis in­tend to vote for the PNM with 16 per cent in­tend­ing to vote for the UNC,” the sur­vey stat­ed.

The poll al­so dis­cov­ered that while 33 per cent of In­do-Tri­nis in­tend to vote for the UNC,12 per cent in­tend to vote for the PNM.

Com­par­ing how re­spon­dents vot­ed in the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion to how they in­tend to vote on Mon­day, it showed that 68 per cent of those who vot­ed for the PNM five years ago in­tend to do so again in 2020. This com­pares with the 55 per cent of those who vot­ed for the UNC in 2015 in­tend­ing to do so in this elec­tion.

“Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, 41 per cent of past UNC vot­ers are un­de­cid­ed about who they will vote for in 2020. This com­pares with 16 per cent of past PNM vot­ers who are un­de­cid­ed.”

The three most im­por­tant is­sues re­spon­dents stat­ed are like­ly to in­flu­ence which par­ty they vote for are un­em­ploy­ment (98 per cent), health care (97 per cent) and COVID-19 (97 per cent).

As to which par­ty has been best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, the PNM was seen as most ca­pa­ble in deal­ing with health care, hous­ing, pub­lic trans­port, ed­u­ca­tion and road re­pairs, which re­ceived rat­ings up­ward of 40 per cent.

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Poll’s method­ol­o­gy

The polling di­vi­sions (PDs) were grouped by loy­al­ty to the UNC/PNM.

Loy­al PDs were iden­ti­fied as those in which the win­ning par­ty had a dif­fer­ence from the los­er of 15 per cent 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.

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.

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