Over half the voters in Guyana believe that the opposition PPP would defeat the ruling APNU+AFC coalition in Monday’s general elections, according to a recently conducted independent opinion poll. Another independent poll found similar results.
Associates of Turkeyn Research & Polling Institute (TRPI) asked respondents which party they thought would win the March 2nd elections. Fifty-four percent said that they thought the PPP would defeat the coalition if the election is free and fair, while 45 percent thought the coalition would win re-election and 1% had no opinion or unsure of which party will be victorious. A majority of the voters also felt that the election would rigged. There is credible evidence of disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. Many names have been removed from the voters list. And the elections commission has made it difficult for supporters of the PPP to go out and vote; polling places have been removed from PPP strongholds. There is a fear that supporters of PPP will be intimidated to prevent them from voting. There is also concern that agents would be ejected from polling stations and boxes stuffed. This would alter the real results.
The TRPI pollsters clarify that the above numbers are by no means the actual support of the two major parties but only reflect peoples’ views which party they feel is likely to win the elections.
No one is of the view that any of the other (small) parties can win the elections. In fact, most of the voters, over 95%, do not believe the small parties will win a seat seeing the election as a straight fight between PPP and APNU-led coalition. Not much is mentioned about the small parties. However, the poll finds that a couple small parties could gain representation in parliament through the largest fraction or left over votes. It takes about 1.5% if the total votes for a seat in the 65 members chamber.
The poll was conducted through a random sampling of likely voters that reflect the demographics of the population. The margin of error was plus or minus 3%.
A separate independent poll found PPP at 53% and APNU at 45%. However, the poll finds PPP will be rigged out of 3% thereby reducing its popular support. The small parties has support of 2%. This poll has a margin of error of 4%. Some 50K voters can’t be accounted for. These voters could play a major role in fraud.? This could alter the results significantly.