SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Tu­na­puna can­di­date Es­mond Forde is ahead of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can­di­date and for­mer pro­fes­sion­al foot­baller David Nakhid in the tus­sle for the mar­gin­al seat in Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

In­cum­bent Forde is lead­ing Nakhid, a first-time con­tender in the po­lit­i­cal are­na, by a 16 per cent mar­gin, ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of a re­cent poll on the con­stituen­cy con­duct­ed by HHB and As­so­ciates Ltd led by poll­ster Louis Bertrand.

The poll, com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia, has a six per cent mar­gin of er­ror.

In­ter­views were con­duct­ed on 200 reg­is­tered vot­ers in the con­stituen­cy on is­sues rang­ing from what in­flu­ences their vote, par­ty best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, gen­er­al progress of the coun­try and peo­ple, per­for­mance in the con­stituen­cy (PNM) and (UNC), as­sess­ment of can­di­dates, opin­ion of the can­di­dates, rea­sons for the rat­ings, vot­ing in­ten­tions and vot­er switch­ing pat­terns.

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The poll is one of six mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies HHB and As­so­ciates fo­cused on lead­ing up to the elec­tion.

Tu­na­puna, sit­u­at­ed along the east-west cor­ri­dor is a mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy with 26,650 reg­is­tered vot­ers. This seat, which has been main­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the PNM over the years, has changed hands sev­er­al times.

In 2000, UNC can­di­date Mervyn As­sam snatched the con­stituen­cy from PNM’s Ed­die Hart, who had served for two terms.

A decade lat­er, for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Win­ston Dook­er­an, who con­test­ed on a Con­gress of the Peo­ple tick­et un­der the then Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion ad­min­is­tra­tion, emerged vic­to­ri­ous over PNM ri­val Es­ther Le Gen­dre.

In the 2015 polls, the PNM took con­trol of the seat with can­di­date Forde cap­tur­ing 11,228 votes to the UNC’s Wayne Munroe, who net­ted 7,613 bal­lots.

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This con­stituen­cy has been con­sid­ered to be one of the seats that de­ter­mines which of the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties will win any gen­er­al elec­tion to form the gov­ern­ment.

Look­ing at the vot­ing in­ten­tions, re­spon­dents were asked which par­ty they would vote for in the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Pre­cise­ly “39 per cent” re­port­ed they would sup­port the PNM to the UNC’s “23 per cent.” How­ev­er, “22 per cent” were “un­de­cid­ed” while “six per cent” re­fused to say. Ten per cent opt­ed not to vote. The poll re­port­ed a “rel­a­tive­ly high” (70 per cent) “like­li­hood of vot­ing among elec­tors.”

In terms of “favoura­bil­i­ty”, re­spon­dents gave Forde a “57 per cent” rat­ing com­pared to Nakhid’s “41 per cent.” More peo­ple, the sur­vey showed, are un­sure about Nakhid “46 per cent” than Forde “24 per cent.” How­ev­er, both can­di­dates tied with re­spect to “car­ing about peo­ple” in the con­stituen­cy.

A sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er per­cent­age of elec­tors (41 per cent) rat­ed Forde as do­ing a good job than his UNC coun­ter­part (18 per cent).

With re­spect to things dis­liked about the can­di­dates, the poll found that Forde’s main prob­lems “seem to be that he is per­ceived as not do­ing a good job (39 per cent) and he is not seen enough in the con­stituen­cy (26 per cent). Nakhid on the oth­er hand, re­spon­dents felt, is not well known (27 per cent) in the area.

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Re­gard­ing which can­di­date is bet­ter known in the con­stituen­cy, Forde ob­tained a “90 per cent” rat­ing com­pared to Nakhid’s “78 per cent.”

The poll al­so looked at vot­er switch­ing pat­terns by com­par­ing how re­spon­dents vot­ed in the 2015 Gen­er­al Elec­tion with how they in­tend to vote on Au­gust 10.

It was dis­cov­ered that 76 per cent of those who vot­ed for the PNM in 2015 in­tend to do so again in 2020. This com­pares with 77 per cent of those who vot­ed for the UNC in 2015 who in­tend to do so again in Mon­day’s polls. It al­so found that six per cent of those who vot­ed for the PNM in 2015 in­tend to switch to the UNC.

“Race, as a fac­tor in vot­ing in­ten­tions, con­tin­ues to be im­por­tant in this con­stituen­cy,” the poll stat­ed.

Delv­ing deep­er in­to the vot­ing in­ten­tions, the poll stat­ed that 58 per cent of Afro-Tri­nis in­tend to vote for the PNM with on­ly 13 per cent in­tend­ing to vote for the UNC.

“On the oth­er hand, while 42 of In­do-Tri­nis in­tend to vote for the UNC, 11 per cent in­tend to vote for the PNM,” the poll not­ed.

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Poll’s method­ol­o­gy

A sam­ple of 200 elec­tors were drawn from the con­stituen­cy. 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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