A re­cent da­ta-dri­ven fore­cast by Cana­di­an con­sul­tan­cy firm Dunn Pierre Bar­nett and Com­pa­ny (DP­BA) has pre­dict­ed a nar­row vic­to­ry for the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Mon­day.

The in­de­pen­dent com­pre­hen­sive re­port, which analysed over 5000 vot­er sen­ti­ment sur­veys, con­stituen­cy-lev­el da­ta, and AI-as­sist­ed pro­jec­tions, sug­gest­ed that the UNC, led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is poised to edge out the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) amid what it de­scribed as wide­spread so­cio-eco­nom­ic dis­sat­is­fac­tion and wan­ing sup­port among Afro-Trinida­di­an vot­ers for the PNM.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Di­rec­tor of Re­search Dr Jus­tine Pierre said the pro­jec­tion was de­ter­mined by slim mar­gins.

“Based on our da­ta and analy­sis we are pre­dict­ing that the UNC would be vic­to­ri­ous over the PNM.”

The com­pa­ny, which has a record in pre­dic­tive analy­sis, has pro­ject­ed the UNC to win 21 seats and the PNM, 20.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, the DP­BA has suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct­ed po­lit­i­cal fore­cast­ing, labour mar­ket re­search, and so­cio-eco­nom­ic stud­ies across Cana­da, the Caribbean, and Africa.

No­tably, DP­BA has pro­vid­ed elec­toral pre­dic­tions for coun­tries such as Do­mini­ca, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Saint Lu­cia, Grena­da, and Bar­ba­dos, achiev­ing an ac­cu­ra­cy rate ex­ceed­ing 90% in past elec­tion cy­cles.

It said this sur­vey re­gard­ing T&T’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion was not com­mis­sioned by any en­ti­ty or po­lit­i­cal par­ty, but the DP­BA said it took it up­on it­self to com­mis­sion the poll be­cause of pre­vi­ous work it has done in the Caribbean.

“We con­duct­ed the Cari­com hu­man traf­fick­ing study and Trinidad was our pi­lot. We con­duct­ed the PA­HO/WHO mi­gra­tion study of the Caribbean where we did a lot of work in al­most all the Caribbean is­lands. What makes our com­pa­ny a lit­tle more spe­cial is that we have maybe one of the largest data­bas­es in the world. We have da­ta of maybe over 60 mil­lion peo­ple in about 40 dif­fer­ent coun­tries in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Afro vot­ers shift­ing to UNC

Ac­cord­ing to the study’s po­lit­i­cal overview, the re­cent res­ig­na­tion of now for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and the sub­se­quent ap­point­ment of Stu­art Young in­tro­duced new dy­nam­ics in­to the po­lit­i­cal land­scape. It said the re­draw­ing of con­stituen­cy bound­aries by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) added com­plex­i­ty to the elec­toral process.

Pierre not­ed that the study em­ployed a mixed-meth­ods ap­proach, in­cor­po­rat­ing sur­vey da­ta from 5,013 re­spon­dents con­duct­ed be­tween March 20 and April 15, 2025, his­tor­i­cal vot­ing trends, AI-as­sist­ed pre­dic­tive mod­els and con­stituen­cy-lev­el analy­ses.

Da­ta was al­so col­lect­ed and analysed from a re­cent poll con­duct­ed by Po­lit­i­cal Sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany and pub­lished by Guardian Me­dia.

DP­BA said in 11 mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, the UNC leads with 45% sup­port com­pared to the PNM’s 30%. Third-par­ty sup­port stands at 13%.

“We looked at the per­sons who lived with­in the 41 con­stituen­cies and analysed them based on their age, gen­der, eth­nic­i­ty, and so­cio-eco­nom­ic sta­tus. We al­so looked at the vot­er uni­verse of which there are 18 com­po­nents and we looked at that. In terms of er­ror, our mar­gin of er­ror was about 2- 2.9 per cent.”

Pierre al­so drilled down in­to the key fac­tors in­flu­enc­ing the 2025 polls.

He said 71% of DP­BA sur­vey re­spon­dents be­lieve a change in gov­ern­ment will im­prove so­cio-eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. There were al­so con­cerns with crime and pub­lic safe­ty (68%), eco­nom­ic de­cline (59%), for­eign ex­change short­ages (52%) and en­er­gy sec­tor cri­sis (45%).

He al­so not­ed that there was dis­sat­is­fac­tion among PNM vot­ers with new lead­er­ship in the par­ty.

“Most peo­ple his­tor­i­cal­ly vot­ed along racial lines. How­ev­er, when we looked at the analy­sis and asked peo­ple about their vot­ing his­to­ry, we found out most UNC mem­bers tra­di­tion­al­ly vot­ed for the UNC of a spe­cif­ic eth­nic group. How­ev­er, when we looked at the Afro group we found there was a large shift in the choice from the PNM to the UNC. From those we in­ter­viewed about 47% of a spe­cif­ic eth­nic group in­di­cat­ed they will give their vote to the UNC.”

Pierre al­so ex­plained that the UNC has man­aged to as­sert it­self bet­ter on so­cial me­dia when com­pared to the oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties.

He al­so stat­ed that the role of AI and the use of sci­en­tif­ic da­ta dur­ing an elec­tion was crit­i­cal for an elec­torate to make an in­formed de­ci­sion.

“It is im­por­tant that ac­cu­rate da­ta be pre­sent­ed be­cause we need to make de­ci­sions based on da­ta. Gone are the days where we make de­ci­sions based on how we feel, that de­ci­sion should be ground­ed in spe­cif­ic sci­en­tif­ic da­ta.”

At­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as well as Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to re­spond to the find­ings of the pre­dic­tive analy­sis were un­suc­cess­ful up to late yes­ter­day evening.

Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), Gary Grif­fith said, “It is a whole mess, there is ab­solute­ly no way any­body can say what the out­come is go­ing to be un­til Mon­day night. Hav­ing said that it shows the need for our me­dia to get ac­tu­al sci­en­tif­ic polls done.”

NAC­TA says race too close to call

Mean­while, a re­cent North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NAC­TA) poll showed that Mon­day’s Gen­er­al Elec­tion is too close to call, with the PNM and UNC locked in a tight race.

The sur­vey, co­or­di­nat­ed by Dr Vish­nu Bis­ram and based on in­ter­views with 1,200 like­ly vot­ers across Trinidad, sug­gest­ed that key swing con­stituen­cies re­main high­ly com­pet­i­tive, and a small per­cent­age of un­de­cid­ed vot­ers could tip the bal­ance.

While the UNC has a slight edge in over­all sup­port and ris­ing con­fi­dence in its lead­er­ship, the NAC­TA poll said the out­come will like­ly de­pend on re­sults in a few bat­tle­ground seats.

The find­ings sug­gest­ed that mi­nor par­ties are not ex­pect­ed to win but could in­flu­ence tight races. NAC­TA said among small­er par­ties, the Pro­gres­sive Front (PF) holds 4% sup­port, the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) 2%, and oth­er par­ties and in­de­pen­dents less than 1%. In To­ba­go, the PNM leads in the West, while the East re­mains up for grabs.