The projected findings of an ongoing opinion survey being conducted by pollster and political analyst Dr. Vishnu Bisram for the North American Caribbean Teachers Association to determine the outcome of the June 12 local government elections (for 80 local authorities) show the incumbent People’s Progressive Party winning a landslide. Dr Bisram has been conducting opinion surveys in Guyana and other Caribbean nations since the 1980s.
As earlier tracking NACTA polls of last December and January and February found, there was a lack of enthusiasm for the opposition Peoples National Congress in the coming LGE. The PNC was found to have miniscule overall support in the local bodies and is heading for defeat in most NDCs and at least half of the municipalities.
In hundreds of seats and in several NDCs, the PNC showed no meaningful (or no) presence of being engaged in a political election campaign; there has been hardly any sign of an election contest from the main opposition party. A NACTA poll conducted last January and February found zero presence of PNC activists in hundreds of constituencies suggesting that the party had thrown in the political towel and was not likely to contest in those seats especially in PPP rural strongholds. In contrast, the PPP Civic that has been governing at the center since August 2020, has a strong or dominant campaign presence of activists everywhere suggesting it was likely to contest in all seats inclusive of traditional strongholds where it had zero chance of victory in previous elections.
As revealed by Gecom in early May, many local government seats (and a few NDCs) are not being contested by more than one candidate, landing wins to the PPP nominees as the NACTA polls had projected.
The PNC seems hamstrung with funding challenges and leadership issues. There is a paucity or scarcity of the party’s campaign paraphernalia in the public domain. And many donors who supported the party’s campaign in the 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections have said they will not fund the party under the current political dispensation. In addition, a large majority of traditional supporters express a lack of confidence in the leader and are not enthused about voting. Also, unlike in earlier elections, volunteers appear very scarce to canvass and motivate voter turnout. Political and voter morale in strongholds is very low. The party has virtually no campaign (staff and or paraphernalia) presence in several of the 70 NDCS and ten municipalities and in many constituencies including in areas it won in the 2018 and 2016 local elections. The political leader of the P{NC is very unpopular. He has not been successful in inspiring or motivating traditional supporters. Voter turnout among PNC supporters is expected to hit an all time low resulting in a huge defeat for the party, the Bisram poll has found.
In the contested NDCs and municipalities, the trend as found in the NACTA poll is an overall sweeping victory for the PPP. As earlier NACTA polls found and now confirmed by the latest poll, the PPP is attracting cross over racial appeal. The PPP has been making in roads in every local authority. The PPP has made gains everywhere in voter support including in traditional PNC strongholds and will wrest seats from the opposition party although it is too early to say whether the PPP can dethrone the PNC in its hard core base. Only in the traditional strongholds of Georgetown, Linden, and New Amsterdam and a few other areas is the PNC putting up strong resistance to PPP political encroachment. However, the findings of the poll reveal that the PNC could lose several rural NDCs that it won in or has controlled since the 2016 and 2018 local government elections.
