LOUIS BERTRAND

For many elec­tions in the past, it has been known that young peo­ple tend to be rel­a­tive­ly un­in­ter­est­ed in the elec­toral process. In this cur­rent na­tion­al poll, 40 per cent of re­spon­dents, who were all reg­is­tered to vote, said they did not care who wins the elec­tion in Au­gust 2020. Fur­ther­more, this lack of in­ter­est ex­tends to per­sons be­tween 18-44 years old. In short, this is no longer con­fined to the “youth”. This is a very large and dis­turb­ing trend in the pop­u­la­tion.

Fur­ther­more, the is­sues of im­por­tance which would help the elec­torate de­cide which par­ty to vote for in 2020 are, all across the coun­try, fun­da­men­tals such as util­i­ties, roads, un­em­ploy­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of youth. In some ar­eas it is crime. These are peren­ni­al prob­lems which have not been solved by ei­ther of the par­ties over a long pe­ri­od of time.

This has re­sult­ed in wide­spread dis­il­lu­sion­ment among the pop­u­la­tion about which par­ty is equipped to ad­e­quate­ly solve the prob­lem. For ex­am­ple, with re­spect to the pro­vi­sion of util­i­ties, while 34 per cent of re­spon­dents be­lieve the PNM is best ca­pa­ble and 30 per cent that the UNC is best ca­pa­ble—sta­tis­ti­cal­ly no sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence be­tween the two par­ties—ful­ly 34 per cent be­lieve that nei­ther could solve the prob­lem.

The sit­u­a­tion is sim­i­lar with re­spect to sev­er­al oth­er is­sues—28 per cent be­lieve nei­ther par­ty could solve the prob­lems of un­em­ploy­ment, 42 per cent the drug prob­lem and 41 per cent cor­rup­tion.

And 75 per cent of re­spon­dents re­port that the coun­try has ei­ther not changed or has be­come worse over the past five years.

With re­spect to favoura­bil­i­ty, there is no sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the rat­ings of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Kei­th Row­ley. This is al­so the case con­cern­ing which one of them was like­ly to be the bet­ter Prime Min­is­ter.

It is no sur­prise how­ev­er that the rat­ings of the two ma­jor con­tenders are sig­nif­i­cant­ly cor­re­lat­ed with race. Afros heav­i­ly favour Row­ley and In­do heav­i­ly favour Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Dif­fer­ences in vot­ing in­ten­tions (which par­ty they would vote for) are very mar­gin­al­ly in favour of the PNM but this is in the coun­try over­all—a re­sult of lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance in a first past the post elec­toral sys­tem where it is the num­ber of con­stituen­cies (seats) won that mat­ters.

And here too vot­ing pref­er­ence is high­ly cor­re­lat­ed with race.

For those in the pop­u­la­tion ( and al­most all of the “third” par­ties) who wish to see a delink­ing of vot­er pref­er­ence from race, 2020 will not see such a change. In gen­er­al, all of the third par­ties, in­clud­ing the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) which is the most es­tab­lished of this group, fare rather bad­ly in terms of po­lit­i­cal prospects for the up­com­ing elec­tions.