SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

A poll done on the mar­gin­al con­stituen­cy of St Joseph by HHB and As­so­ciates shows the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) can­di­date Ter­rence Deyals­ingh slight­ly ahead of Ahloy Hunt of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), with 74 per cent of the re­spon­dents who vot­ed for the PNM in 2015 say­ing they in­tend to sup­port the in­cum­bent com­pared to 53 per cent favour­ing the UNC’s can­di­date.

How­ev­er, while Deyals­ingh has a small edge over Hunt, many re­spon­dents said he has be­come too cocky, ar­ro­gant and is not vis­i­ble in his con­stituen­cy. They al­so said while Hunt is a new­com­er in the elec­tion fray, he lacks in­tegri­ty and does not care about peo­ple.

The poll, which was com­mis­sioned by Guardian Me­dia, has a six per cent mar­gin of er­ror.

A sam­ple of 200 reg­is­tered elec­tors was in­ter­viewed face to face about the ma­jor is­sues in­flu­enc­ing the vote, the par­ty best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, per­for­mance in the con­stituen­cy, as­sess­ment of can­di­dates among oth­er sub­jects

In the 2010, 2015 gen­er­al elec­tions Deyals­ingh who cap­tured 10,536 votes com­pared to 8,903 for the UNC’s Vas­ant Bharath.

Deyals­ingh the out­go­ing Health Min­is­ter will bat­tle Hunt, a for­mer lieu­tenant colonel and the broth­er of for­mer PNM’ gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Gary Hunt for the seat.

Ac­cord­ing to the poll, over the last five years, the PNM had record­ed a 40 per cent good per­for­mance in the con­stituen­cy com­pared to the UNC’s 23 per cent. How­ev­er, 28 per cent of re­spon­dents felt the PNM had per­formed bad­ly to the UNC’s 26 per cent.

In terms of favoura­bil­i­ty, Deyals­ingh scored 50 per cent to Hunt’s 29 per cent, while a four per cent dif­fer­ence sep­a­rat­ed Hunt (22 per cent) and Deyals­ingh (26 per cent) in the un­favourable cat­e­go­ry.

Re­spon­dents were asked to iden­ti­fy some things they liked about both can­di­dates. Deyals­ingh was praised for do­ing a good job by 39 per cent of the peo­ple polled com­pared to Hunt’s 23 per cent. On the oth­er hand, Hunt was seen as more car­ing (54 per cent) than Deyals­ingh (24 per cent).

In out­lin­ing the can­di­dates’ short­com­ings, re­spon­dents com­plained that Deyals­ingh was “not vis­i­ble to his con­stituents (25 per cent) and he does noth­ing (17 per cent),” the poll stat­ed.

There is a per­cep­tion that he “knows you when it’s ben­e­fi­cial to him,” and “ has be­come too cocky/ar­ro­gant.”

As for Hunt, there is the be­lief “that he does not care about peo­ple (12 per cent) and “lacks in­tegri­ty.” Some re­spon­dents al­so felt “his poli­cies are over the top.”

Over­all, 93 per cent of vot­ers stat­ed that Deyals­ingh is bet­ter known. On­ly 63 per cent said they knew/heard about Hunt.

The like­li­hood of vot­ing among elec­tors in the con­stituen­cy was rel­a­tive­ly high—75 per cent.

As to which par­ty re­spon­dents say they would sup­port, 40 per cent favoured the PNM and 31 per cent sup­port­ed the UNC, while, 22 per cent were un­sure or re­fused to say who they would vote for. Eight per cent said they will not be vot­ing

Ac­cord­ing to the poll’s vot­er switch­ing pat­terns, “da­ta shows 74 per cent of those who vot­ed for the PNM in 2015 in­tend to do so again in 2020.” A lit­tle more than half (53 per cent) of those who vot­ed for the UNC five years ago promised to sup­port Hunt.

The poll al­so re­vealed that sev­en per cent of those who vot­ed for the UNC in 2015 in­tend to switch to the PNM.

“This com­pares with the three per cent who vot­ed for the PNM in 2015, in­tend­ing to switch to the UNC in 2020,” the poll stat­ed

Vot­ers cit­ed youth train­ing and de­vel­op­ment (99 per cent), in­fra­struc­ture (97 per cent) and un­em­ploy­ment (96 per cent) as the three most im­por­tant is­sues that will in­flu­ence their votes. The least of their con­cerns was the il­le­gal Venezue­lan im­mi­grants, re­open­ing of the econ­o­my and al­low­ing for­eign na­tion­als to come home.

On the ques­tion of which par­ty is best ca­pa­ble of solv­ing prob­lems, re­spon­dents choose the PNM over the UNC.

Al­most one-third of vot­ers (31 per cent) said they are per­son­al­ly worse off to­day com­pared to five years ago, while 38 per cent claimed their per­son­al sit­u­a­tion had not changed and 29 per cent said they were in a bet­ter po­si­tion.

Poll’s method­ol­o­gy for St Joseph (put in a box)

A ran­dom sam­ple of 200 elec­tors was drawn from this con­stituen­cy and the polling di­vi­sions (PDs) were grouped by loy­al­ty to the UNC of PNM.

Loy­al PDs were iden­ti­fied as those in which the win­ning par­ty had a dif­fer­ence from the los­er of 15 per cent or more. All oth­ers were deemed to be mar­gin­al.

This al­lowed HHB and As­so­ciates to se­lect small­er sam­ples from loy­al polling di­vi­sions and larg­er sam­ples from mar­gin­al di­vi­sions.

The de­mo­graph­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of the sam­ple with re­spect to age, gen­der, race and re­li­gion re­flect the poll­ster’s es­ti­mate of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the con­stituen­cy as a whole.