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Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Voter turnout and final results

by

Prof Hamid Ghany
66 days ago
20250413

PROF HAMID GHANY

hamid.ghany@sta.uwi.edu

Now that Nom­i­na­tion Day has come and gone, the spot­light now shifts to vot­er turnout—an un­pre­dictable yet de­ci­sive fac­tor that could shape the out­come of the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion for every par­ty and can­di­date in the race.

As the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign heats up, one crit­i­cal fac­tor looms large: how many peo­ple will ac­tu­al­ly show up to cast a bal­lot? To un­der­stand what is at stake, an ex­am­i­na­tion of sta­tis­tics from the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion will give us some in­sight in­to how turnout af­fect­ed that elec­tion.

The of­fi­cial turnout in 2020 was 58.04 per cent of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion's (EBC) list of vot­ers, and the PNM walked away with 49.08 per cent of the votes cast, se­cur­ing 22 seats out of 41 they con­test­ed. The UNC earned 47.09 per cent of the votes cast and won 19 seats out of 39 seats they con­test­ed.

For the fourth time in our po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry, the par­ty that won a ma­jor­i­ty of seats and formed the gov­ern­ment did so with a mi­nor­i­ty of votes–few­er than half of the to­tal votes cast.

This was not new: in 1991, 2007, and 2010, sim­i­lar out­comes emerged. In 1991, the PNM won 21 out of 36 seats with 45.02 per cent of the votes cast. In 2007, they took 26 of the 41 seats with 45.99 per cent of the votes. Then in 2010, the UNC won 21 of the 41 seats–from the 29 that they con­test­ed–with 43.72 per cent of the votes cast.

In po­lit­i­cal sci­ence, this phe­nom­e­non is known as a “man­u­fac­tured ma­jor­i­ty.”

It is a com­mon fea­ture of the first-past-the-post elec­toral sys­tem, where dif­fer­ences in vot­er turnout across con­stituen­cies can lead to a par­ty win­ning more seats than their share of the na­tion­al vote would sug­gest.

In the 2020 elec­tion, the prime rea­son why there was a “man­u­fac­tured ma­jor­i­ty” was be­cause there were eight seats that were won with a less than 50 per cent turnout of vot­ers, and all of those seats were won by the PNM.

Those seats were (i) Port-of-Spain South (42.33%), (ii) Laven­tille West (43.71%), (iii) Diego Mar­tin West (46.67%), (iv) Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West (46.74%), (v) Laven­tille East/Mor­vant (47.17%), (vi) Diego Mar­tin North East (47.34%), Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral (48.45%), and To­ba­go West (49.88%).

Sev­en of these seats are ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly con­tigu­ous and com­prise the north-west part of Trinidad. On­ly To­ba­go West is not con­nect­ed to them.

These low­est turnout lev­els be­low 50 per cent are to be con­trast­ed with the top eight con­stituen­cies with the high­est turnout: (i) Moru­ga/Table­land (69.29%), (ii) Pointe-a-Pierre (66.21%), (iii) Fyz­abad (65.74%), (iv) La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro (64.22%), (v) St. Joseph (63.94%), (vi) Ch­agua­nas East (63.60%), (vii) Tu­na­puna (63.12%) and St Au­gus­tine (63.02%).

The two To­ba­go con­stituen­cies had turnout fig­ures as fol­lows: (i) To­ba­go East (56.76%) and (ii) To­ba­go West (49.88%). In the case of To­ba­go East, that turnout rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease from 2015, when the turnout was 52.29 per cent, while in the case of To­ba­go West, there was a fur­ther de­cline from the 2015 turnout, which was 51.45 per cent.

The UNC did not con­test any seats in To­ba­go. As a re­sult, the head-to-head vot­er tal­ly in Trinidad alone was UNC: 309,188 and PNM: 305,848. De­spite the UNC re­ceiv­ing more votes, the first-past-the-post sys­tem re­sult­ed in the PNM win­ning 20 seats and the UNC 19 seats in Trinidad. This out­come high­lights the sys­temic im­bal­ance that the first-past-the-post sys­tem can pro­duce.

The to­tal pop­u­lar vote across all 41 con­stituen­cies saw the PNM reg­is­ter­ing 322,250 from both is­lands com­bined. This marked the fourth oc­ca­sion on which the UNC se­cured more votes than the PNM in Trinidad alone—the pre­vi­ous in­stances be­ing in 2000, 2001, and 2010. These re­sults high­light the cru­cial strate­gic im­por­tance of To­ba­go to the PNM’s over­all elec­toral suc­cess.

How­ev­er, the PNM has held an ad­van­tage over the UNC in every elec­tion since 2001, large­ly due to its con­sis­tent hold on the two To­ba­go seats—ex­cept in 2010, when the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), as part of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, won both.

The low­er vot­er turnout in 2020 (58.04%) com­pared to 66.8% in 2015 might be at­trib­uted to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, a clos­er look at the num­bers shows that this was not the case across the board, as turnout var­ied sig­nif­i­cant­ly across dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try.

Twen­ty-nine out of the 41 con­stituen­cies record­ed a vot­er turnout high­er than the na­tion­al av­er­age of 58.04 per cent.

These con­stituen­cies were:

1. Moru­ga/Table­land – 69.35%

2. Pointe-a-Pierre 66.21%

3. Fyz­abad – 65.74%

4. La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro – 64.29%

5. St Joseph – 63.94%

6. Ch­agua­nas East – 63.60%

7. Tu­na­puna – 63.12%

8. St Au­gus­tine – 63.02%

9. Ma­yaro – 62.55%

10. Ch­agua­nas West – 62.52%

11. San Fer­nan­do West – 62.34%

12. Ca­roni Cen­tral – 62.04%

13. Lopinot/Bon Air West – 61.62%

14. Oropouche West – 61.43%

15. Barataria/San Juan – 61.39%

16. Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la – 61.38%

17. Cou­va North – 61.07%

18. Oropouche East 60.86%

19. Siparia – 60.70%

20. Point Fortin – 60.36%

21. Cou­va South – 60.24%

22. Ca­roni East – 59.99%

23. La Brea – 59.87%

24. Princes Town – 59.71%

25. Na­pari­ma – 59.28%

26. Tabaquite – 58.68%

27. To­co/San­gre Grande – 58.61%

28. San Fer­nan­do East – 58.34%

29. Arou­ca/Mal­oney – 58.19%

Of the 29 con­stituen­cies, the UNC won 19, while the PNM se­cured ten. The re­main­ing 12 con­stituen­cies won by the PNM all record­ed vot­er turnout be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age of 58.04 per cent, con­tribut­ing to their man­u­fac­tured ma­jor­i­ty of 22 out of 41 seats in the 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion.

These were:

1. Port-of-Spain South (42.43%)

2. Laven­tille West (43.66%)

3. Diego Mar­tin West (46.67%)

4. Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West (46.73%)

5. Laven­tille East/Mor­vant (47.17%)

6. Diego Mar­tin North East (47.34%)

7. Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral (48.45%)

8. To­ba­go West (49.88%)

9. St Ann’s East (50.21%)

10. Ari­ma (51.13%)

11. To­ba­go East (56.76%)

12. D’Abadie/O’Meara (57.96%)

It will be in­ter­est­ing to see how the 2025 turnout fig­ures com­pare to those of 2020, when the ma­jor­i­ty of con­stituen­cies—29 out of 41—record­ed high­er turnout than the na­tion­al av­er­age of 58.04 per cent, con­tribut­ing to the PNM se­cur­ing a man­u­fac­tured ma­jor­i­ty.


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