With just days to go be­fore Trinidad and To­ba­go's Gen­er­al Elec­tion on Mon­day, the lat­est poll con­duct­ed by the North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NAC­TA) re­veals a fierce­ly con­test­ed race, with no ma­jor par­ty—nei­ther the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) nor the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC)—hold­ing a de­ci­sive lead in sev­er­al crit­i­cal swing con­stituen­cies.

The sur­vey, co­or­di­nat­ed by Dr. Vish­nu Bis­ram and based on in­ter­views with 1,200 like­ly vot­ers across Trinidad, sug­gests the out­come re­mains un­cer­tain, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mar­gin­al seats where the dif­fer­ence in sup­port be­tween par­ties falls with­in the poll’s mar­gin of er­ror of 4%. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 4% of re­spon­dents re­main un­de­cid­ed or have de­clined to dis­close their par­ty pref­er­ence, mak­ing the race too close to call in many ar­eas.

Ac­cord­ing to NAC­TA, the elec­tion could come down to a hand­ful of bat­tle­ground con­stituen­cies, as nei­ther par­ty has yet se­cured the 21-seat thresh­old need­ed to form a gov­ern­ment. Some mar­gin­al seats show a slight PNM ad­van­tage, while oth­ers lean to­wards the UNC, point­ing to an un­pre­dictable fin­ish.

Small­er par­ties, while un­like­ly to win any seats, could nonethe­less play a spoil­er role in a few con­stituen­cies. Their sup­port­ers, of­ten dis­il­lu­sioned with the dom­i­nant po­lit­i­cal forces, may in­flu­ence the fi­nal tal­lies in tight races. NAC­TA notes that most can­di­dates from these mi­nor par­ties—aside from those aligned with the UNC—are like­ly to lose their de­posits.

Top con­cerns for vot­ers re­main the econ­o­my and crime, with a ma­jor­i­ty ex­press­ing greater con­fi­dence in the UNC's abil­i­ty to ad­dress these is­sues. The poll al­so high­lights a no­table shift in lead­er­ship per­cep­tion. Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the UNC's long­time leader, has seen a resur­gence in pop­u­lar­i­ty and in­ter­nal sup­port. For­mer par­ty crit­ics and ex-MPs have re­turned to the cam­paign trail in mar­gin­al seats.

It said Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has al­so bol­stered his par­ty's cam­paign with an en­er­getic pres­ence, ap­peal­ing to a broad cross-sec­tion of vot­ers, in­clud­ing youth and mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. His per­son­al ap­peal and me­dia ap­pear­ances ap­pear to have res­onat­ed with some swing vot­ers.

The poll re­veals that, com­pared to the 2020 elec­tion, the PNM has lost sup­port in near­ly every con­stituen­cy ex­cept Moru­ga, Ch­agua­nas East, Barataria, and Ma­yaro. Con­verse­ly, the UNC and its part­ners have gained ground in near­ly all oth­er ar­eas. How­ev­er, the tight­ness of many races means gains in pop­u­lar sup­port may not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late to seat vic­to­ries.

Na­tion­wide, the UNC al­liance holds a slight edge over the PNM in over­all pop­u­lar vote in Trinidad. 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 race al­so presents a split: the PNM is ahead in To­ba­go West, while To­ba­go East re­mains high­ly com­pet­i­tive. Wat­son Duke’s Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP), once a sig­nif­i­cant force, now trails be­hind both the PNM and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) and risks los­ing de­posits in both dis­tricts.

Ac­cord­ing to the poll, as both ma­jor par­ties ex­press con­fi­dence head­ing in­to Mon­day’s vote, one thing is cer­tain: this elec­tion is go­ing down to the wire, and the fi­nal out­come may rest in the hands of the un­de­cid­ed.