Reading polls and timing elections

Orville Taylor, Contributor

"Call it, Andrew, call it!" Well, we waited and waited and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) supporters turned green in anticipation but, alas, like the famous Bob Marley song, they waited in vain because he didn't call it.

It is the prerogative of the prime minister to set the date of a general election, and if Labourites can be annoyed and disappointed that the date was not announced, imagine the rest of us. As the obviously frustrated JLP aficionados gathered their spirits and leaked out of the National Arena on Sunday, I couldn't help but remember the obvious dissent Floyd Morris showed in 2007, when Portia Simpson Miller refused one time too many to call it. Morris, unfortunately, did not notice that his gestures were seen until it was too late.

Like Morris and others, the guessing game is as pleasant as a haemorrhoid, and it was compounded by the thought that it was religious or spiritual influences on this most secular of the things we render unto Caesar. For the truth is, according to the Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson poll, the average Jamaican does not want the election in December, as some 37 per cent would prefer placing their X early next year.

christmas matters

Nonetheless, we want to know when it will be, because we have the important business of Christmas, overspending and overeating, speeding and drunkenness to deal with. For the more sober 'Christians', including those who worship on three other occasions each year, the festive season should not be tainted with other concerns. However, if you are a Seventh-day Adventist, then there is no issue regarding a Christmas election.

Nevertheless, given the recent opinion polls, Prime Minister of Education Andrew Holness would give himself a great Yuletide present of an election victory by calling it now. Despite the façade of calm, the People's National Party (PNP) is not overcoming the JLP as it thinks. The early-October Don Anderson polls pointed to a difference of four per cent for the PNP; Ian Boxill and the University of the West Indies-based team indicate a lead of more than three for the JLP; and the most recent Johnson survey has shown more or less the same advantage to the PNP. However, though Johnson's polls show the PNP ahead, 43 per cent of respondents declared that they believed Holness to be a better choice as prime minister than the 35 who indicated Portia Simpson Miller.

Well, here is a lesson in social-research methods. It is not so such a big deal that the three independent musketeers have come up with very similar findings. After all, we can hide behind statistical analysis and fly the margin-of-error escape hatch if we wish. Thus, my 'hard-ears' Comrade friends might be comforted that all three do not reflect a consensus but a consistent anomaly. Fine! Debate with me if they wish, although a more appropriate adversary in the debate should be the JLP, but the margin of error is actually less.

When surveys are carried out, the researchers use a sample. If the sample is drawn properly, it is like when one goes to the medical lab and blood or tissue is taken. This is used to show the overall characteristic of the entire body. Of course, if you look at a small part of the skin, for example, there is the possibility that the variation in the sample is so much that one can miss some relevant feature of the entire body. In social research, we call this sample error.

Then there are non-sampling errors, which skilled and experienced researchers such as these three learn to account for. Therefore, when we say margin of error, the researchers have already taken all of these into consideration.
A simple rule of thumb is that the larger the sample size, the smaller the margin of error. Therefore, when one examines the results of the three pollsters, who use similar methodology and who survey the same population, what do we have? Less error to contend with. So, to put it in non-technical terms, the surveyors from the three different camps actually combine for a larger sample, and guess what? Less likelihood that the results are wrong. Still, we have a real dead heat.

However, momentum is with the Labourites, and they are odds-on favourites to take it home, assuming, of course, that Andrew calls it now as his supporters ask. Still, he could wait too long and call it wrong. There are a few Comrades who will tell him so.

Notwithstanding his high approval rating, this is all about timing, and Holness is not impervious to challenges. Never mind his youthfulness, he is not the exciting speaker one would expect of someone who is among the youngest in Parliament. Furthermore, his speech last Sunday was spiceless. Faced with a major embarrassment caused by the auditor general's report on the operations of JDIP, he has made a decisive move and relieved Minister Mike Henry of responsibility for it, but it is felt that in terminating the CEO's contract of employment, the Wong man was fired. Then with the portfolio now his, he was a no-show in Parliament as the matter came up for scrutiny.

JDIP could very well be his undoing if he takes too long to call the election, because there are real questions to answer. And the longer he postpones the election, the more responsibility he will be deemed to have and the more queries he will face.

losing control?

Furthermore, the unexplained challenge presented now by St Mary Member of Parliament Bobby Montague to the chairmanship of the partially defrocked Henry pushes the question of how much control and leadership Holness is exercising. A situation as untidy as a fat man in spangie jeans, it is undesirable that just after the annual conference and with the air reeking of election, such dissidence should be in Holness' party.

If Henry is responsible, Holness should remove the rest of his squalor-avoiding garb and not leave him to fight for his political life with the unbridled man who "could have amassed the delegates to win" the party presidency. Such a kernel of divisiveness among powerful party players could be as destructive as the 2006 schism in the PNP.

As we approach the debates, which are themselves becoming a source of debate for the political parties, the unmasking of the two candidates for prime minister should come. I would like to see a face-to-face one-on-one between Holness and Simpson Miller. After all, we know that neither was seen as the best or most competent. Rather, it was simply, who could make the party 'cross it'.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI and a radio talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.