Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad

The pop­u­la­tion is still reel­ing from the tsuna­mi which re­sult­ed in the land­slide vic­to­ry of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in last Mon­day's gen­er­al elec­tion. The eu­pho­ria which greet­ed the re­moval of Patrick Man­ning and the rise of Trinidad and To­ba­go's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, could not even be damp­ened by the in­ces­sant tor­ren­tial down­pours this past week. Kam­la's his­toric swear­ing in on May 26 co­in­cid­ed with the ris­ing flood wa­ters seem­ly gur­gling in uni­son with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship that "we will rise."

High vot­er turnout

The im­mea­sur­able tidal wave dis­cussed in last Sun­day's col­umn was sur­pris­ing for many as the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship com­fort­ably se­cured 29 of the 41 con­stituen­cies to the PNM's 12. Pre­lim­i­nary re­sults in­di­cate that the vot­er turnout last Mon­day was around 69 per cent which is rel­a­tive­ly high when com­pared to the gen­er­al trend of re­cent elec­tions. The first gen­er­al elec­tion in 1956 and 1961 re­veal very high vot­er turnouts of 82 per cent and 88 per cent of reg­is­tered vot­ers, re­spec­tive­ly. The 1971 elec­tion was unique be­cause of the non-par­tic­i­pa­tion of the op­po­si­tion in the no-vote cam­paign which protest­ed the PNM's use of fraud­u­lent vot­er ma­chines.

It had re­sult­ed in a vot­er turnout of 33 per cent–all for the PNM as the on­ly par­ty con­test­ing the elec­tions. This vot­er turnout fluc­tu­at­ed be­tween 55 per cent and 66 per cent be­tween 1976 and 2001. The 2002 elec­tion re­flect a sim­i­lar vot­er turnout to last Mon­day's av­er­ag­ing around 69 per cent as com­pared to 66 per cent of the 2007 elec­tion. This sug­gest an in­crease of at least three per cent of votes from 2007 to 2010. The size of the elec­torate has in­creased from 990,467 in 2007 to 1,040,128 in 2010 re­flect­ing an in­crease of 49,661 vot­ers. Ob­vi­ous­ly, not all of these new vot­ers would have vot­ed last Mon­day but it is safe to sur­mise that the Part­ner­ship ben­e­fit­ed from the bulk of the new votes cast.

Vote dis­tri­b­u­tion

The to­tal votes cast last Mon­day were 722,322 of which the PNM re­ceived 285,354 or 39.5 per cent. In 2007, the PNM had re­ceived 299,813 votes re­flect­ing a re­duc­tion in PNM votes of 14,459 across the 41 con­stituen­cies in 2010. This sug­gests that the swing votes from the PNM to the Part­ner­ship are not as sub­stan­tial as some may be in­clined to think. In 2010, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gained 432,026 ac­count­ing for 59.81 per cent of the elec­torate. The UNC alone re­ceived 308,541 votes amount­ing to 42.7 per cent of the elec­torate. The COP gained 108,143 votes or 15 per cent of the elec­torate. The TOP's sup­port amount­ed to 15,342 votes while 2,347 went to the oth­er small­er par­ties in­clud­ing the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion which man­aged to scrape 1,998 votes.

New votes

In 2007, the com­bined UNC/COP/TUF-DAC votes were 351,267. The in­crease in Part­ner­ship votes in 2010 amounts to 80,759. A high per­cent­age of this would have come from the 49,661 new vot­ers, for­mer­ly reg­is­tered non-vot­ers, and float­ing vot­ers. A small per­cent­age would have swung from the PNM. It may there­fore be more ac­cu­rate to as­sume that the PNM's re­duc­tion is an in­di­ca­tion of tra­di­tion­al PNM sup­port­ers opt­ing to ab­stain rather than vote for ei­ther the PNM or the Part­ner­ship. This, of course, worked in favour of the Part­ner­ship.

14 seats wrest­ed from PNM

A com­par­i­son of the votes of the PNM and that of the com­bined UNC/COP/TUF-DAC of 2007 in the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies, with that of safe PNM seats which went to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship of the 2010 elec­tion is re­flect­ed in the ta­ble 1 on Page 8. The Part­ner­ship gained all ten mar­gin­als of 2007 (in­clud­ing Ma­yaro which it re­tained) as well as the five safe PNM seats of Ari­ma, D'Abadie O'Meara, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, To­co/San­gre Grande, and To­ba­go West, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of seats gained by the Part­ner­ship to 14. This, com­bined with the UNC's safe seats of 2007, amounts to 29.

Safe PNM seats now mar­gin­al

The sta­tis­tics in Col­umn D sug­gest that the con­fig­u­ra­tion of mar­gin­al and safe seats have now changed. Us­ing the fig­ure 2000 and be­low as the mark­er for iden­ti­fy­ing mar­gin­al seats, six safe PNM seats have now be­come mar­gin­al. These in­clude Ari­ma, D'Abadie/O'Meara, La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro, Lopinot Bon Air, To­ba­go West and To­co/San­gre Grande. In­ter­est­ing­ly, San Fer­nan­do West re­mains a mar­gin­al seat, but more note­wor­thy is that the tra­di­tion­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of Tu­na­puna has now mi­grat­ed in­to the cat­e­go­ry of a safe seat. The seat dis­tri­b­u­tion across po­lit­i­cal par­ties for the 41 con­stituen­cies re­flects the UNC alone win­ning 21 of the 41 con­stituen­cies giv­ing the par­ty a ma­jor­i­ty in the Par­lia­ment. \

The COP gained six and the TOP two in To­ba­go. The Gov­ern­ment's Par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty of 17 seats de­rived from the Part­ner­ships 29 seats to the PNM's 12 au­gurs well for the coali­tion's sus­tain­abil­i­ty for the next five years, all things be­ing equal. More­over, the Part­ner­ship now has the ad­van­tage of a two thirds ma­jor­i­ty which would fa­cil­i­tate the pas­sage of some sig­nif­i­cant bills in the Par­lia­ment. How­ev­er, all of this could change with new dy­nam­ics in the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

Method­ol­o­gy

1. Col­umn A iden­ti­fies the 14 con­stituen­cies which the Part­ner­ship wrest­ed from the PNM in 2010.

2. Col­umn B presents the 2010 Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship votes of the 14 seats list­ed in Col­umn A.

3. Col­umn C presents the 2010 PNM votes in the 14 seats list­ed in Col­umn A.

4. Col­umn D sub­tracts the Part­ner­ship votes from the PNM votes to show the dif­fer­ence in votes be­tween the two par­ties in 2010 for each con­stituen­cy list­ed in Col­umn A.

5. Col­umn E sub­tracts the com­bined 2007 UNC/COP or TUF/DAC votes from that of the PNM in 2007 for each of the 14 con­stituen­cies list­ed in Col­umn A.

6. Col­umn F cal­cu­lates the net gains from 2007 for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship for the 2010 elec­tions in the 14 con­stituen­cies list­ed in Col­umn A.