How is the PUP rated at the end of its second term of office? According to a poll released today by the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR), the ruling Musa administration gets a “D” as its grade point average (GPA).
SPEAR Executive Director, Gus Perera, said that the margin of error in the poll is plus or minus 5%, meaning they are 95% confident that their numbers are correct.
As did the October 2006 SPEAR poll, this new poll suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the current administration – with 218 of 417 respondents (52%) giving the Government a failing grade. A total of 122 people gave a “D” score, while 96 gave an “F”. However, 154 people (37% of respondents) gave the administration an A, B or C grade.
If we were to follow basic school rules, that “D” grade would not be high enough for a promotion to the next class. Widespread dissatisfaction would suggest that the ruling party should not expect another term in office, or should it? The results were not as clear-cut, since over half the respondents—all registered voters—said they were either undecided or would like to keep their choice confidential.
“The election is up in the air, up for grabs and anybody can win this election,” remarked PUP public relations officer Yasser Musa, the Prime Minister’s eldest son. He said that the PUP has a record of fighting ‘til the bitter end.
“You win the elections on Election Day,” he added.
Even though he challenges the credibility of the poll, and the agenda of those who have conducted it, he said that the poll does reinforce the culture of ballot secrecy.
“Let us say that those people were coming with a clear and positive agenda, the poll should suggest what the culture is saying, people are private and they don’t want to give out their business,” Musa continued, adding that even though the thousands of people he has met on the campaign trail may appear to be PUP, “when they get in the box, I don’t know what they will do.”
In fact, over half the respondents have not revealed how they will vote, and so that makes it difficult to accurately forecast a winner in the upcoming elections.
Nonetheless, that did not stop SPEAR from using math and computer modeling to try and come up with some answers. In fact, they came up with three possible forecasts, based on the results of the poll.
The three forecasts place the UDP ahead of the PUP nationally, but behind the PUP in the northernmost district of Corozal and the southernmost district of Toledo. In the 4 remaining districts, however, the UDP got more favorable responses than the PUP.
What seemed clear from the results is that the “issues” will decide the fate of the political parties in 2008.
We queried exactly what those issues are and while there were no specific issues identified in this poll, Perera said that the issues identified in previous polls include poverty, transparency, education, health, oil, taxes, cost of fuel, and cost of utilities.
While the results are presented by district, the reality is that each district is further divided into electoral divisions—the place where the battles will take place on Election Day. Unfortunately, the poll gives no feel for what voters are saying across the various electoral divisions, and Perera said that they were unable to do the poll according to divisions because no voters’ list was available.
Pollsters interviewed 417 people by calling landlines across Belize. The poll addressed six areas: (1) voter turnout or disposition, (2) government performance rating, (3) voter inclination, (4) voter motivation, (5) quality of life, and (6) optimism on the outcome of the elections.
The final figures for the 2003 elections indicate a voter turnout of 79.51%—not as high as the 90.14% in 1998. Of the persons polled, 87.3% said they would go to the polls to vote. 9.1% are undecided, but 3.1% said categorically that they wouldn’t go out to vote.
What was clear in this poll is that people do care about the secrecy of their vote. A quarter of the respondents said that they wanted their vote to be kept confidential. Another 27% said they were undecided, which in our culture could also mean that they want to keep their vote a secret.
The 2008 SPEAR poll results were released this morning at the Belize Institute of Management in Belize City. Even before the results were released, Prime Minister Said Musa indicated to us that the poll is biased.
His son, Yasser Musa, said for him there are two issues: (1) we have to ask who is conducting the poll, and (2) do they have credibility.
SPEAR has revealed that the Association of Concerned Belizeans has co-financed the poll. This morning Perera informed that the ACB provided about a fourth of the funds for the undertaking. Musa alleges that the ACB is an associate party of the Opposition United Democratic Party, but the ACB has always maintained that it is an independent organization.
Musa also said that the so-called scientific approach taken by SPEAR “has a lot of holes in it,” and that not even 1% of the population was polled, making the number of respondents “insignificant.”
He accused SPEAR of having a “hidden, secret, covert agenda.”
While the PUP is dismissing the SPEAR poll, UDP Opposition Leader Dean Barrow said that he is taking it seriously, but he added that the poll has “some very sharp limitations.”
“If the sampling is so small and furthermore you are dealing only with people with landlines, that’s a very obvious limitation,” Barrow said.
He added, however, that he is “naturally pleased with the results, since any of the three scenarios clearly has the UDP winning.”
That the election will be decided on the issues is a huge plus for the UDP, he added.
As to the poll results in Toledo and Corozal, where more favor was shown for the PUP than the UDP, Barrow said one thing to take into account is that some parts of the Toledo East constituency and the entire Toledo West are vastly inaccessible via phone.
“It would mean that that particular result [for Toledo] would have to be terribly skewed,” he added.
The poll, indeed, has some flaws. For example, it does not take into account any individuals not associated with any of the parties, as is the case with Herman Lewis in Toledo. The poll also indicates that 1.3% of voters in the Belize District will vote for the NBA, even though that alliance doesn’t have any candidates in that district.
Where do the third parties – the Vision Inspired by the People (VIP), the National Belizean Alliance (NBA) and the National Reform Party (NRP) stand? The poll indicates that the best responses for third parties are in the south, with 4.8% of voters in Toledo saying they would vote for the NBA, and 7.1% of respondents in Stann Creek saying they will vote for the VIP.
Previous SPEAR polls had showed more favorable responses for the third parties, and far less favorable responses for the PUP.
Perera said that while their intention is not to sway voters in one way or another, there are two ways the poll may affect the undecided vote: there is what you call the bandwagon effect, meaning that when people see who is likely to win, people are likely to join the winners, and then you have the underdog effect, where some people may, for whatever reason, reconsider their vote. It could go two ways on a poll close to elections and if you track polls in the States, you will see that that has been the case.”
He said that SPEAR did the poll because they had received calls from citizens requesting the poll because they wanted to know where we stand going into the General Elections.
(Henry Gordon, Amandala columnist, Kremandala Show panelist and UDP supporter, accompanied Perera at the press conference this morning. Gordon was there in his capacity as director of SPEAR.)