De­spite sig­nif­i­cant dis­en­chant­ment with the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), the ad­min­is­tra­tion has still man­aged to take an ear­ly lead over the Op­po­si­tion UNC and oth­er par­ties for con­trol of the 14 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions in the run-up to the No­vem­ber 28 elec­tion, ac­cord­ing to an on­go­ing sur­vey con­duct­ed by the North Amer­i­can Caribbean Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NAC­TA).

The as­so­ci­a­tion said al­though a large ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers were not pleased with PNM gov­er­nance, they do not view the Op­po­si­tion UNC, as cur­rent­ly con­sti­tut­ed, as a vi­able al­ter­na­tive at this time.

It added grass­roots sup­port­ers and ac­tivists of the UNC ex­pressed dis­ap­proval of some of the prospec­tive (pro­ject­ed) can­di­dates in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions and this dis­ap­proval com­bined with per­ceived par­ty in­fight­ing will fur­ther erode the UNC's prospects in the lo­cals.

The find­ings of the poll showed the PNM was not un­der threat to lose any of the eight lo­cal bod­ies it now con­trols and was on course to make gains.

Of the 135 seats up for grabs, the rul­ing par­ty cur­rent­ly con­trols 84 seats and it could lose a few seats to the UNC but pick up as many as five based on the lat­est polling da­ta and at least one bor­ough could change par­ty con­trol.

Nac­ta said no oth­er par­ty was pro­ject­ed to win any seat or lo­cal body but sup­port could change for the two dom­i­nant par­ties de­pend­ing on can­di­date se­lec­tion and the lev­el of their ac­cep­tance by ac­tivists and vot­ers.

The find­ings re­vealed dis­en­chant­ment with both the PNM and UNC with many re­spon­dents clam­our­ing for a strong third po­lit­i­cal force. Giv­en the cur­rent choic­es, how­ev­er, vot­ers pre­ferred the PNM over the UNC by a huge mar­gin.

Ac­cord­ing to the find­ings of the sur­vey, the PNM leads the UNC 44 per cent to 37 per cent with the mi­ni-par­ties com­bined gain­ing less than three per cent of sup­port. The poll has an er­ror of four per cent, mean­ing sup­port could vary in ei­ther di­rec­tion.

A large num­ber of vot­ers in­di­cat­ed they will not vote and these non-vot­ers were not in­clud­ed in the polling pref­er­ence. With five weeks of cam­paign­ing now start­ing, a prospec­tive out­come could change by elec­tion day.

The on­go­ing poll be­gan ear­ly this month in­ter­view­ing 850 vot­ers to re­flect the de­mo­graph­ics of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

The poll used face-to-face in­ter­views with a four per cent mar­gin of er­ror sug­gest­ing close­ly fought seats could go ei­ther way. The poll was co-or­di­nat­ed by Dr Vish­nu Bis­ram, a po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist and news­pa­per colum­nist in New York. The pro­ject­ed out­come was based on this and ear­li­er polls con­duct­ed in May, June and Au­gust that in­ter­viewed a fur­ther 2,000 vot­ers.