Orville Taylor | In poll position for election

Politics, like life itself, is about what people believe, not what actually is. And no matter how good or rotten you are, if the voters do not like you, then the election is going to be the hardest thing you have ever faced.

With a deep pungency the dust is settling and mud is being mixed but the bedrock of voter sentiment is becoming apparent in the two major Anglophone democracies in the hemisphere. I am a sociologist and as long as the research methodologies are sound and the investigators are honest, I will back the polls even if the results and the tribalist are poles apart.

The people have not yet spoken but the Don Anderson surveys see the electorate gargling their throats and exercising their jaws for the main address which is just beyond the horizon. One might recall that on the eve of the last general election in February 2016, Anderson’s numbers were 30.8 per cent for the People’s National Party (PNP) and 27.5 for the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) on the question of which party the respondents preferred and would vote for.

Importantly, it was a statistical dead heat given a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent. In such cases, any party that did not make the effort to get the voters out, especially in marginal seats, would suffer. Back in 2016, the overall turnout was just over 48 per cent, with the JLP gaining 50.8 per cent of the popular vote to the PNP’s 49.71. With a 32-31 seat split decision, the polls were accurate within the margin of error. However, more important, the labourites ‘shub out’ their voters while the PNP slept. Remember this, a semi-fit Usain Bolt lost his last race to two Americans, who would normally be his beating sticks, because he was underprepared by not training for the 200 metres in 2017.

Four years later, a few tribalists, idealists and optimists are attempting to vilify Anderson and the RJR Gleaner Group which commissioned the recent version, and they do so at their own peril. When asked to rate the Opposition, 57 per cent of Jamaicans judged it either poor or very poor. In a country where electors typically vote for party and leader as an entity, the PNP must feel as comfortable as someone wearing derailed underwear. There is no separate election for head of government and seats in the legislature as in the USA.

Honing in on the leader of Opposition, Dr Peter Phillips, the polls show a similar 52 per cent rating him poor or very poor. Some 11 per cent of Jamaicans consider him the worst spokesman for his party, while only five per cent think he is the best. More troubling is that the largest response numbers as to who is the best performing spokesperson is the category ‘none’ at 12 per cent. Only Peter ‘II’ Bunting polls double digits at an even 10 per cent. For all the padded narratives, those numbers can’t make the PNP be stiff challengers in the next election.

For some, the recent by-election in South Eastern Clarendon, uncontested by the PNP with a few ‘observers’ was an acid test. In fact, ‘independent’ candidate Derrick Lambert might have been the biggest observer, because he clearly did not seem to be involved in the election at all. If his votes were salt in a pot of soup, it would have no flavour. Nonetheless, results demonstrated that people wanted to keep the constituency green. True, only 18 per cent of the listed voters turned out in the constituency, compared to 48.7 in 2016. However, 7,583 persons voted of which 6,845 marked X for the JLP. This is almost 70 per cent of the 10,045 Labourites from 2016.

GOOD SHOW FOR SHOWERS

In an election where only half of the contestants is present, this is a good show for the showers. A vote for Lambert would’ve been just symbolic.

Still, there is more reason for PNP angst because while the split in the middle in 2016 did not favour the head and the JLP won by a nose, this time the JLP is way ahead. Most important, only 25 per cent of residents believe that the government is doing a poor job, compared to 38 per cent thinking it is doing well or very well. Of course, an indifferent category of 37 per cent can swing either way later.

Yet, almost 50 per cent of Jamaicans think that Prime Minister Andrew Holness is doing a good or very good job and fewer than a quarter think he is performing badly. Interestingly, despite the imminence of the coronavirus and frequent complaints about the health sector, Dr Christopher Tufton is living up to his name and polling at 21 per cent as popular choice for best performing minister. The PNP needs to find some pill which is not stocked by the government pharmacies for it to hold its own and make its leader succeed in the election. This is election Matrix and as hard as the red pill is to swallow, the blue one is blissful ignorance.

Farther afield the Americans, and ‘blue’ democrats in particular, are having a reality check. You can’t win the Democratic nomination without the black vote. Out of the race to represent the party has fallen billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose green did not buy him favour with the black voters. Author of the ‘stop and frisk’ racist policing strategy in the mid-2010s, no patting of the African Americans helped to convince them that he is a viable option.

Similarly, 40 per cent of blacks say they wouldn’t vote for a gay president. The former mayor of the almost cheekily named South Bend, Indiana, and coincidentally named Peter Buttigieg just bowed out. Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate to seek and win delegates in a presidential primary race, conceded that he doesn’t have the necessary support to win his party’s nomination and ultimately successfully challenge Donald Trump.

Numbers generally do not generally lie but sometimes people lie to themselves.

- Dr Orville Taylor is head of the Department of Sociology at the University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.