In many ways, the US po­lit­i­cal sys­tem is dif­fer­ent from the West­min­ster mod­el that op­er­ates in T&T. One of the most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences is that an elec­toral col­lege does not come in­to play in the se­lec­tion of this coun­try’s next prime min­is­ter.

In­stead, T&T’s high­est po­lit­i­cal of­fice is oc­cu­pied by the leader of the par­ty that com­mands the ma­jor­i­ty in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. How­ev­er, there are some im­por­tant lessons to be learnt from the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly as T&T is head­ed to­ward a gen­er­al elec­tion with­in a year.

Don­ald Trump’s re­turn to pow­er, with a com­mand­ing lead in the elec­toral col­lege as well as the pop­u­lar vote, will be the sub­ject of deep analy­sis for some time to come, and some will at­tempt to draw par­al­lels to the sit­u­a­tion here, where the PNM and the UNC will soon em­bark on in­tense cam­paigns.

Every par­ty as­pir­ing to form T&T’s next gov­ern­ment should take note of the over­sights that led to the de­feat of Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and the De­moc­rats, as well as the Re­pub­li­can par­ty’s win­ning strate­gies.

Polls had pre­dict­ed a tight race be­tween Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris and for­mer pres­i­dent Trump, but that was not borne out by the re­sults. That brings in­to ques­tion the ac­cu­ra­cy of polls for gaug­ing the mood of the elec­torate.

The out­come of the elec­tion showed that many peo­ple felt their lives were bet­ter un­der Trump and vot­ed ac­cord­ing­ly. The econ­o­my and per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty—with the lat­ter in­flu­enced by the im­mi­gra­tion is­sue—res­onat­ed more with vot­ers than the oth­er is­sues on which the can­di­dates cam­paigned.

The out­come was de­cid­ed by vot­ers who vot­ed against things they didn’t like rather than the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the can­di­date who emerged vic­to­ri­ous. There is a big les­son here for lo­cal politi­cians about un­der­stand­ing the mood of the elec­torate and re­spond­ing ac­cord­ing­ly.

Al­though the elec­tion bell has not yet been rung, crime is like­ly to be the biggest cam­paign is­sue, fol­lowed by the bread-and-but­ter is­sues that al­ways res­onate with T&T vot­ers.

Gang vi­o­lence is on the rise and like­ly to wors­en in the com­ing years un­less there is a sig­nif­i­cant shift in the way the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion ad­dress­es this cri­sis. There has been a sharp in­crease in mur­ders, and a homi­cide rate of 26 per 100,000 peo­ple high­lights the fail­ures of the many com­mu­ni­ty-based an­ti-gang ini­tia­tives that have been im­ple­ment­ed since 2015.

Al­so, vot­ers are like­ly to cast their bal­lots based on the fi­nan­cial is­sues that im­pact them di­rect­ly. All the talk about el­e­vat­ed oil and gas prices and GDP growth means very lit­tle to an elec­torate still strug­gling with the cost of liv­ing.

The man in the street is un­like­ly to be swayed by the lat­est favourable as­sess­ment of the T&T econ­o­my by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) if his salary has not kept pace with ris­ing food costs.

An­oth­er trend like­ly to fig­ure promi­nent­ly in the gen­er­al elec­tion is the grow­ing na­tion­al­ism in To­ba­go and the strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

Fail­ure to de­liv­er the long-promised au­ton­o­my is like­ly to in­flu­ence vot­ing in the two crit­i­cal To­ba­go seats. The bot­tom line is that the elec­torate will not be swayed by glitzy cam­paigns or fan­cy man­i­festos. As hap­pened in the US, they will vote for the par­ty they think will make their lives bet­ter.