The People's Partnership is facing a stiff challenge in its quest for a second term as it completes its fifth year in office. These are the findings of tracking polls conducted by the North American Caribbean Teachers' Association (Nacta).
Although the PP and the Opposition PNM are neck and neck in popular support, and although Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar is leading Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley in popularity, her coalition trails the PNM in key battleground constituencies that will determine which party wins the next general election.
The poll, conducted by Vishnu Bisram, shows the PNM leading in seven critical seats (Toco/Sangre Grande, Arima, D'Abadie, Lopinot/Bon Air West, La Horquetta/Talparo, Tunapuna and San Fernando West) that it lost to the PP in 2010. The PP is barely leading in St Joseph and Barataria.
In addition, over a quarter of the population remains undecided and many also don't plan to vote expressing dissatisfaction with the choices before them. In Tunapuna, for example, PNM leads 35 per cent to the PP's 31 per cent, with the other parties nine per cent and 25 per cent undecided.
The latest findings of the poll show Persad-Bissessar enormously popular among PP supporters, and she is also attracting significant crossover voters, though not as wide a margin as obtained in 2010, when she won a landslide 29-12 victory. The PNM base is also somewhat solidified behind Dr Rowley, but he is not getting significant crossover racial support to win.
The poll shows that party supporters and independent voters are supportive of the PM over the Emailgate matter, but Dr Rowley has won sympathy among PNM supporters over his suspension from Parliament.
The ILP, MSJ, and others are attracting nearly eight per cent of the votes and they could very well influence the outcome of the next election either in an alliance with one of the major parties or splitting the base of the two larger parties.
The latest findings of the poll were obtained from interviews with 490 respondents nationally and 120 in Tunapuna over the last three weeks. Voting trends were obtained from interviews with an additional 1,100 respondents in other polls conducted between January and May, reflecting the demographics of the population (40 per cent Indians, 38 per cent Africans, 21 per cent Mixed, and one per cent Others). The latest poll has a four per cent margin of error.