KAY­MAR JOR­DAN

Man­ag­ing Ed­i­tor

kay­mar.jor­dan@guardian.co.tt

The April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion is still too close to call and is go­ing down to the wire.

How­ev­er, based on the just-re­leased re­sults of a Guardian Me­dia-com­mis­sioned pub­lic opin­ion poll, the main op­po­si­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), cur­rent­ly has the sta­tis­ti­cal edge over the in­cum­bent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in key mar­gin­al seats in Trinidad, while the PNM is lead­ing in To­ba­go.

In the last elec­tion on Au­gust 10, 2020, the two To­ba­go seats were won by the PNM, while the UNC cap­tured six of the swing seats and the PNM five.

Since then, how­ev­er, the po­lit­i­cal dy­nam­ics in the coun­try have changed and are to­day be­ing re­flect­ed in the re­sults of the in­de­pen­dent sur­vey con­duct­ed by re­spect­ed poll­ster and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany be­tween April 10 and April 13 in the 11 mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, name­ly Barataria/San Juan, Ch­agua­nas East, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Ma­yaro, Moru­ga/Table­land, Pointe-a-Pierre (now called Clax­ton Bay), San Fer­nan­do West, St Joseph, To­co/San­gre Grande, and Tu­na­puna.

Views were al­so can­vassed in To­ba­go on po­lit­i­cal sup­port and na­tion­al is­sues us­ing the same ques­tion­naire method­ol­o­gy over the same four-day pe­ri­od.

Poll­ster Ghany stopped short of is­su­ing any de­c­la­ra­tions on the fi­nal seat count, but said the sur­vey re­vealed a gen­er­al lev­el of dis­sat­is­fac­tion (61 per cent) among the 1,650 Trinidad re­spon­dents, drawn from var­i­ous eth­nic back­grounds, with the PNM’s per­for­mance over the past ten years in of­fice, as well as un­cer­tain­ty over its cur­rent lead­er­ship fol­low­ing the re­cent prime min­is­te­r­i­al tran­si­tion from Dr Kei­th Row­ley to Stu­art Young.

When asked who they find to be more be­liev­able, the ma­jor­i­ty of re­spon­dents in Trinidad (47 per cent) chose the UNC’s Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who is lead­ing a Coali­tion of In­ter­ests in­to the elec­tion, over Young, who polled 31 per cent sup­port.

The same re­spon­dents al­so said they found Per­sad-Bisses­sar (48 per cent) is bet­ter for the econ­o­my than Young (32 per cent), with Gary Grif­fith, of the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), and Mick­ela Pan­day, of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (PF), each gar­ner­ing two per cent sup­port on han­dling the econ­o­my.

This com­pares to 47 per cent favoura­bil­i­ty for Young in To­ba­go, where he is seen as more be­liev­able than THA Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine (36 per cent sup­port) and Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke (1 per cent), based on the sur­vey con­duct­ed there among 530 re­spon­dents.

To­bag­o­ni­ans sur­veyed al­so said they were gen­er­al­ly sat­is­fied with the PNM’s per­for­mance (61 per cent), and when asked who they were go­ing to vote for in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion, 47 per cent in­di­cat­ed the PNM, com­pared to 32 per cent for Au­gus­tine’s To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP), 9 per cent for Duke’s PDP, and 4 per cent for oth­er par­ties and can­di­dates.

Of the re­main­ing re­spon­dents, 4 per cent said they wished to keep their vote pri­vate, 3 per cent were un­sure, and 1 per cent said none.

In Trinidad, when asked if the Gen­er­al Elec­tion were held to­mor­row, which par­ty they would vote for, 45 per cent of swing-seat re­spon­dents said the UNC coali­tion and 30 per cent, the PNM.

With the elec­tion now a mere week away and a to­tal of 17 po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the race for con­trol of the 41 seats in the Red House, it is ex­pect­ed that the out­come will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed by vote split­ting.

“(In Trinidad) the split-vote phe­nom­e­non is alive and well, as the com­bined ef­fect of the sup­port for the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front (7 per cent) and the Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (6 per cent) has a 13 per cent vot­er de­vi­a­tion loom­ing over the heads of both the UNC and the PNM,” poll­ster Ghany said.

“As re­gards which of the two ma­jor par­ties they are hurt­ing more, it is dif­fi­cult to tell. If it is the UNC coali­tion, then that would mean that they would have to make fur­ther in­roads in­to the UNC coali­tion to hurt their chances.

“If, how­ev­er, they are hurt­ing the PNM as part of an an­ti-UNC vote, then the UNC will be the prime ben­e­fi­cia­ry of such a vote split.

“How the ac­tu­al vote split­ting will play out in any of these mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies can­not be pre­dict­ed, but any close fin­ish­es could be the re­sult of vote split­ting one way or an­oth­er.”

How­ev­er, in To­ba­go, where vote split­ting is al­so at play, Ghany feels it will re­dound to the PNM’s ben­e­fit at the end of the day, giv­en the tight­ness of the race.

The poll has a mar­gin of er­ror of +/- 2.5 per cent for Trinidad, where five of the mar­gin­als sur­veyed–Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Pointe-a-Pierre, San Fer­nan­do West, and To­co/San­gre Grande–were re­cent­ly im­pact­ed by bound­ary changes made by the Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion.

In To­ba­go, the mar­gin of er­ror is +/- 4.0 per cent based on re­cent shifts in po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances.