SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

A re­cent poll has shown a near sta­tis­ti­cal tie in the rat­ings of Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in terms of who would make the bet­ter Prime Min­is­ter lead­ing up to the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The poll al­so found no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween Row­ley and Per­sad-Bisses­sar with re­spect to a “favoura­bil­i­ty rat­ing” as po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

The poll was un­der­tak­en for Guardian Me­dia by H.H.B & As­so­ciates Lim­it­ed, whose man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Louis Bertrand is a na­tion­al poll­ster. The firm was com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia to con­duct two sur­veys—the first a na­tion­al poll while the oth­er fo­cused on six mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies lead­ing up to the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Re­spon­dents were ques­tioned on sev­er­al is­sues, in­clud­ing their in­ter­est in the elec­tion, ma­jor is­sues in­flu­enc­ing their votes, the par­ty best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, gen­er­al progress of the coun­try and peo­ple, per­for­mance in run­ning the coun­try, favourable rat­ings of key po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, com­par­a­tive rat­ing as prime min­is­ter, par­ty im­age and vot­ing in­ten­tions.

The first part of the na­tion­al poll was high­light­ed in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian and showed that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) was slight­ly ahead of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in the elec­tion race. The poll showed that 35 per cent of re­spon­dents sup­port the PNM and 29 per cent the UNC, while on­ly two per cent said they would vote for oth­er par­ties.

Al­so, 40 per cent of re­spon­dents stat­ed that they were not both­ered as to who wins the up­com­ing elec­tion, while 30 per cent re­port­ed they were worse off to­day than five years ago.

De­tails of the na­tion­al poll will con­clude in the T&T Guardian on Wednes­day.

In fur­ther ex­am­in­ing the poll, re­spon­dents were ques­tioned about the favoura­bil­i­ty rat­ings of key po­lit­i­cal lead­ers.

It showed that 57 per cent of vot­ers viewed Row­ley as “favourable” while Per­sad-Bisses­sar cap­tured 53 per cent.

Con­gress of the Peo­ple leader Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan and Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice head David Ab­du­lah re­ceived a favourable rat­ing of 19 and 16 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

“There is no sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Kei­th Row­ley with re­spect to favoura­bil­i­ty rat­ings. Both have favourable rat­ings of just over half of those reg­is­tered to vote,” the poll stat­ed.

In the “un­favourable” cat­e­go­ry, Row­ley ob­tained 43 per cent, Per­sad-Bisses­sar 44 per cent, Seep­er­sad-Bachan 36 per cent and Ab­du­lah 37 per cent.

Bertrand said giv­en the mar­gin of er­ror with the poll, “that is a tie” be­tween Row­ley and Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Re­spon­dents were al­so asked to rate the PNM and UNC per­for­mances in of­fice in the last five years.

“The PNM per­for­mance was gen­er­al­ly rat­ed bet­ter in Gov­ern­ment than the UNC in Op­po­si­tion,” the poll stat­ed.

Re­spon­dents gave the PNM a 46 per cent “good” rat­ing while the UNC re­ceived 35 per cent.

How­ev­er, 25 per cent of vot­ers felt the PNM did a “bad” job with the UNC at­tain­ing 29 per cent.

Pre­cise­ly 27 per cent viewed the PNM’s per­for­mance as “neu­tral.” The UNC re­ceived 30 per cent.

Two per cent re­port­ed “don’t know” for the PNM while the UNC ob­tained six per cent.

Bertrand said there is al­ways a dif­fi­cul­ty in an Op­po­si­tion get­ting a rat­ing on how it per­formed.

“You nev­er see an Op­po­si­tion out­per­form­ing the Gov­ern­ment un­less some­thing re­al­ly rad­i­cal­ly went wrong with the gov­ern­ment,” Bertrand point­ed out.

The poll al­so showed there is a sta­tis­ti­cal tie in the rat­ing of Row­ley and Per­sad-Bisses­sar on who would make the bet­ter Prime Min­is­ter.

Some 39 per cent of the re­spon­dents felt Row­ley would be best suit­ed as PM, while 34 per cent en­dorsed Per­sad-Bisses­sar for the key po­si­tion.

An­oth­er 16 per cent of the vot­ers re­spond­ed “don’t know” while 11 per cent of vot­ers sug­gest­ed “oth­er per­son” as their choice.

Tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion that the poll’s mar­gin of er­ror is four per cent, Bertrand said this re­sult was a draw.

The poll al­so re­port­ed that most Afro-Tri­nis (68 per cent) con­sid­er Row­ley to be like­ly the best Prime Min­is­ter as com­pared with 11 per cent of In­do-Tri­nis who be­lieve the same.

Sim­i­lar­ly, 61 per cent of In­do-Tri­nis con­sid­er Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be the best PM as com­pared with eight per cent Afro-Tri­nis who be­lieve the same.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13.4 per cent Afro-Trinida­di­an and 15.5 per cent In­do-Trinida­di­ans in­ter­viewed stat­ed that they “don’t know” who would be the best per­son to lead the coun­try. Eleven per cent of Afro-Trinida­di­an and 12.5 per cent of In­do-Trinida­di­an felt an­oth­er per­son should be­come PM.

“How­ev­er, it is so of­ten the case, rat­ings vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly by race,” the poll stat­ed.

“Now, who you think would be the best Prime Min­is­ter is high­ly cor­re­lat­ed to race. That is the peren­ni­al prob­lem that we have. We just can­not shake it off.”

METHOD OF THE POLL

In the na­tion­al poll, Bertrand used a two-stage sam­pling pro­ce­dure.

In the first stage, a sam­pling of con­stituen­cies was se­lect­ed with the prob­a­bil­i­ty of se­lec­tion be­ing pro­por­tion­al to the num­ber of reg­is­tered elec­tors in each con­stituen­cy.

This was based on cur­rent Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion da­ta.

In the sec­ond stage, polling di­vi­sions in each of the se­lect­ed con­stituen­cies were se­lect­ed based on the size of vic­to­ry of the win­ning par­ty.

A sam­ple of 600 adults who were reg­is­tered to vote was se­lect­ed.

Ques­tion­naires were ad­min­is­tered face-to-face by in­ter­view­ers to house­holds in the se­lect­ed polling di­vi­sions.

The poll's mar­gin of er­ror is four per cent.