The PNM's cam­paign man­ag­er for the 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, says the UNC failed to make any se­ri­ous in­roads in­to any of the PNM strong­holds.

How­ev­er, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter, Ro­han Sinanan, says the par­ty will be do­ing some se­ri­ous analy­sis of all the re­sults, to de­ter­mine the way for­ward for its 2020 gen­er­al elec­tion strat­e­gy.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Sinanan, one of the key peo­ple on the PNM’s strat­e­gy team for the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed elec­tion, the op­po­si­tion par­ty was un­able to make any im­pact on the East-West Cor­ri­dor.

He says big wins there are crit­i­cal to win­ning the ul­ti­mate prize—a gen­er­al elec­tion.

Min­is­ter Sinanan ex­plains that pick­ing up a cou­ple seats in oth­er re­gions such as Princes Town, Ch­agua­nas or San­gre Grande—which is what the UNC did—won't make a re­al dif­fer­ence to the out­come of a gen­er­al elec­tion.

“The bot­tom line is that the UNC did im­prove and they must be giv­en cred­it for that, but in terms of a gen­er­al elec­tion re­sult, it does not change the fact that they made no im­pact on the East-West Cor­ri­dor,” Ro­han Sinanan states. “In my per­son­al opin­ion, if you can­not make an im­pact on the East-West Cor­ri­dor, you can­not win a gen­er­al elec­tion.”

The PNM strate­gist has com­mend­ed the UNC for gain­ing some ground in the san­gre grande re­gion, even as he points out that while the UNC won the cor­po­ra­tion, it did so by hold­ing on to ar­eas where it nor­mal­ly en­joys sup­port.

“If you look at the San­gre Grande Cor­po­ra­tion and you break it down in­to elec­toral dis­tricts, four of them are in­to the Cu­mu­to-Man­zanil­la seat, which is re­al­ly a strong­hold for the UNC,” he ex­plains. “One elec­toral dis­trict they won is in To­co-San­gre Grande, and the part where the UNC has the most sup­port. In the PNM strong­holds in To­co-San­gre Grande, they made no im­pact at all,” Ro­han Sinanan points out.

He says the UNC made no im­pact in Ari­ma.

In Tu­na­puna, he notes, the one seat they got has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a UNC seat.

How­ev­er, Ro­han Sinanan—like Ter­ry Ron­don—is con­fi­dent that the PNM will re­tain the over­all con­stituen­cy in a gen­er­al elec­tion.

And the min­is­ter ad­mits that in San Fer­nan­do, the Petrotrin clo­sure may have had an im­pact on some of the out­comes there.

He points out that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of those elec­toral dis­tricts fall with­in the Pointe-a-Pierre con­stituen­cy, which tra­di­tion­al­ly, has been a UNC strong­hold.

Thus, he ar­gues, that won’t have any im­pact on San Fer­nan­do East and West con­stituen­cies, which he says will re­main with the PNM in a gen­er­al elec­tion.