The lat­est poll by the North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (Nac­ta) has the op­po­si­tion PNM poised to re­cap­ture the Siparia lo­cal gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion that the Peo­ples Part­ner­ship won in Ju­ly 2010.Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, a split of the sup­port in the PP camp be­tween the UNC and the ILP puts the PNM ahead in the bat­tle for con­trol of that cor­po­ra­tion.

An on­go­ing opin­ion poll be­ing con­duct­ed by Nac­tA to de­ter­mine vot­er sup­port in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions re­veals that the PNM is hold­ing on to most of its sup­port in Siparia while a large chunk of the PP sup­port has shift­ed to the ILP giv­ing the PNM the lead to re­take the cor­po­ra­tion from the PP.

The poll's find­ings else­where show the PNM is set to wrest sev­en cor­po­ra­tions from the PP–Rio Claro, San­gre Grande, Ari­ma, Tu­na­puna, Diego Mar­tin, San­do, and Siparia –be­cause of the splin­ter­ing of PP votes in bat­tle ground cor­po­ra­tions. The PNM is ex­pect­ed to re­tain its strong­holds of Port-of-Spain, Laven­tille and Point­Fortin.

The poll re­veals that while the PNM is ahead in pop­u­lar sup­port in ten of the cor­po­ra­tions, it is trail­ing the com­bined sup­port of the ILP and UNC or ILP and COP in vir­tu­al­ly all of them and in most seats.Be­cause of the di­vi­sion in the vot­ing, the PNM is like­ly to pick up al­most three dozen seats in­clud­ing a few in tra­di­tion­al UNC strong­holds like Pe­nal, Siparia, Princes Town, Cou­va, and Ch­agua­nas that are nor­mal­ly won by the UNC.

The find­ings show that the COP is trail­ing the ILP in all five cor­po­ra­tions it is con­test­ing, where­as the ILP is trail­ing the UNC in the heart­land.The find­ings of the poll in Siparia are based on in­ter­views with 180 re­spon­dents re­flect­ing the de­mo­graph­ics of the pop­u­la­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of the poll, PNM is ahead 32 per cent to 30 per cent with ILP at 21 per cent and 17 per cent un­de­cid­ed or refuse to re­veal their vot­ing choice.Nac­ta al­so polled sup­port for par­ties in oth­er cor­po­ra­tions. The find­ings will be re­leased in a sub­se­quent re­port.