In terms of pop­u­lar­i­ty, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar are in a sta­tis­ti­cal dead­heat go­ing in­to to­mor­row’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

A sum­ma­ry of the na­tion­al poll and six con­stituen­cy polls con­duct­ed be­tween Ju­ly and Au­gust by HHB and As­so­ciates showed no dis­cernible dif­fer­ence in pop­u­lar­i­ty be­tween the PNM and UNC po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

With re­spect to com­pe­tence as the next Prime Min­is­ter, there was a sta­tis­ti­cal tie be­tween the two and on­ly 11 per cent thought that some­one else could do a bet­ter job.

How­ev­er, rat­ings were strong­ly in­flu­enced by race, with 68 per cent of Afro Trinida­di­ans stat­ing that Dr Row­ley would be the best prime min­is­ter and 61 per cent of In­do Trinida­di­ans be­liev­ing the same about Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

At the na­tion­al lev­el, one of the key find­ings re­lates to a per­va­sive and ex­pand­ing lack of in­ter­est in the po­lit­i­cal process in T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to the poll, 40 per cent of re­spon­dents said that they ei­ther cared “not very much” (22 per cent) or “not at all” (18 per cent) who wins the elec­tion, while 59 per cent cared a great deal or a fair amount.

Just un­der half (45 per cent – 48 per cent) of those in the 18-44 age brack­ets do not care who wins the next gen­er­al elec­tions. This drops to be­tween 29 per cent to 36 per cent for those in the 45-plus age brack­ets. Mo­ti­vat­ing the young peo­ple to get in­volved in the elec­toral process has been known to be dif­fi­cult for some time now, but the lack of in­ter­est seems to be spread­ing up to age 44.

For those who in­tend to vote—71 per cent over­all as com­pared with 67 per cent in 2015, the three top

is­sues which would in­flu­ence the vote are util­i­ties, un­em­ploy­ment and youth train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

For two of those is­sues there is a tie be­tween the two par­ties as to who could bet­ter han­dle the is­sue and be­tween a quar­ter (26 per cent) and a third (34 per cent) be­lieve that nei­ther par­ty could ef­fec­tive­ly solve the prob­lems.

As in all gen­er­al elec­tions to date, race is a key in­flu­enc­ing fac­tor in how peo­ple will vote, with 61 per cent of Afro Trinida­di­ans like­ly to vote for the PNM and 55 per cent of In­do Trinida­di­ans in­tend­ing to vote for the UNC.

But elec­tions are fought and won at the con­stituen­cy lev­el and re­sults here will now be ex­am­ined.

One in­di­ca­tor of how po­lit­i­cal par­ties will fare is how they are per­ceived to have per­formed at the con­stituen­cy lev­el.

Com­par­a­tive rat­ings in­di­cate that, on this ba­sis, the PNM is like­ly to be strong in San Fer­nan­do West, To­co/San­gre Grande, Tu­na­puna and St Joseph.

Based on stat­ed vot­er in­ten­tions, the clos­est fight is in Barataria/San Juan where the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two top con­tend­ing par­ties is a mere two per cent. St Joseph shows a PNM lead of nine per cent and Moru­ga/Table­land of 11 per cent. The biggest PNM wins ap­pear to be in San Fer­nan­do West (by 20 per cent), Tu­na­puna (by 16 per cent) and To­co/San­gre Grande (by 13 per cent).

Moru­ga/Table­land, which shows a PNM lead of 11 per cent al­so has the high­est per­cent­age of un­de­cid­ed vot­ers—27 per cent with an ad­di­tion­al 11 per cent re­fus­ing to say how they in­tend­ed to vote. How these groups even­tu­al­ly de­cide will de­ter­mine the out­come in this con­stituen­cy.

One fac­tor of im­por­tance in de­ter­min­ing con­stituen­cy out­comes is par­ty strength and loy­al­ty. Re­sults for Moru­ga/Table­land for ex­am­ple sug­gest that the PNM par­ty im­age/loy­al­ty is more sig­nif­i­cant than the im­age/rat­ings of the can­di­date.

Ex­cept for San Fer­nan­do West, PNM par­ty loy­al­ty for this elec­tion is mar­gin­al­ly high­er than UNC par­ty loy­al­ty.

In St Joseph and To­co/San­gre Grande the per­cent­ages of those who vot­ed for the UNC in 2015 and who were at the time of the poll un­de­cid­ed how they would vote in 2020 were 33 per cent and 41 per cent, re­spec­tive­ly.