Ryan says ULP leading in polls

With just 12 more days to go before Vincentians go to the polls for General Elections, pollster Cecil Ryan of Project Promotions Ltd. has disclosed the findings of his latest polls which is expected to go down as a bittersweet pill.

The polls show the Unity Labour Party winning in the six constituencies where the poll was carried out.{{more}}

One can conclude that Unity Labour Party (ULP) supporters will be excited with the results since the findings at the time the polls were conducted show their party was leading significantly. But the same cannot be said for supporters of the New Democratic Party who might find it hard to accept the results which have shown their party on the down side.

After two weeks-and-a-half conducting the survey, Ryan on Wednesday, told journalists the polls were carried out in the constituencies of Central Kingstown, South Leeward, West Kingstown, East St. George and South Central Leeward which are considered swing constituencies. He said it was also done in the constituency of East Kingstown because this was of particular interest to him since Julian Francis of the incumbent ULP was contesting the seat against Opposition Leader, Arnhim Eustace. He said the results were concluded on Friday, November 18, and the results tallied on Tuesday, November 22.

Ryan said the sample size chosen for the polls was 200 except in the case of South Leeward where it was 100. He disclosed in this constituency there was a case of data corruption where 139 of the 200 interviews were concluded but later while checking the preliminary data he discovered that the interviewer may have compromised the data. He said all of those were discarded and they had to come up with a new sample of 100. He said in any event the hundred is still representative since it represents more than one per cent of the voting population in South Leeward. He said the poll was based on a method called the proportional representation. Forty three point four (43.4) per cent were men while 56.6 per cent were women.

There were 1,089 respondents to Ryan’s poll and of this grouping 60.9 per cent believed the ULP would win the General Elections while 15 per cent said the NDP.

He added that 55 per cent of the respondents said they were going to vote for the ULP while 23.1 per cent said they would vote for the NDP. He said 21.3 remained undecided. Ryan noted that 94 per cent of the respondents said they were registered voters and while 78.5 per cent said they intended to vote, 4.5 per cent said they do not intend to.

Ryan said 61 per cent of the interviewees believed that Prime Minister Dr.Gonsalves was a better choice for leader, 24.3 per cent said Eustace while 14.7 per cent did not know.

When asked who was their choice for Prime Minister Ryan said 58.7 per cent said Dr. Gonsalves while 27.3 per cent claimed Eustace with a category of 14.8 not knowing.

Ryan stated that when the question was put to the sample of voters in Central Kingstown as to which candidate they would vote for, of the 151 valid responses 41.7 per cent said Conrad Sayers of the ULP as compared with 33.8 per cent who said St. Claire Leacock of the NDP.

For East Kingstown, of 176 valid responses, 60.8 per cent said they would vote for Julian Francis of the ULP as compared with 26.7 per cent who said they would vote for Opposition Leader Arnhim Eustace. He said the undecided category stood at 12.5 per cent.

“Mr. Francis and the ULP will have to do something catastrophic for him to lose that lead and on the other hand Mr. Eustace will have to do something dramatic to take the lead,” said Ryan.

The poll indicated that ULP also held the lead in South Leeward. Of 85 valid responses 55.3 per cent indicated they would vote for Dr. Douglas Slater as compared with 34.1 per cent who said Nigel Stevenson of the NDP. For West Kingstown there were 164 valid responses, 54.9 per cent said they would vote for Rene Baptiste of the ULP as compared with 25 per cent who said Daniel Cummings of the NDP.

Ryan said on the question of East St. George, there were 161 valid responses, 50.3 per cent said they would vote for Clayton Burgin of the ULP as opposed to 25.5 per cent who said they would vote for Linton Lewis.

And in South Central Windward there were 155 valid responses of which 58.1 per cent said they would vote for Selmon Walters of the ULP as compared with 34.2 per cent who said they would vote for Brereton Horne.