Election results validate IC Insider report

IC Insider predicted the election outcome in the last general election in Trinidad and Tobago and this week’s Thursday election in Jamaica. In our posting on February 21, the report stated that an analysis of poll numbers since 2014 and the number of eligible voters suggest that Thursday’s general elections in Jamaica could result in a shocker and a major shift in parliament. For the People National Party to win the 2016 elections will require voter turn out to be more than 50 percent.
Jamaica Labour Party polled 436,459 votes or 50.13 percent of the votes cast and the People’s National Party 432,353 votes or 49.66 percent of the total of 870,663 votes just around 2,000 votes more than in 2011. The JLP polled 31,301 more votes than in 2011 while the PNP lost 31,927. Just under 48 percent of the electorate voted. The voter turnout although lower than in 2011 turnout as a percentage of voters list is consist with the level of the population that voted of 32 percent in both elections and better than the participation rate from 1993 to 2007.
IC Insider stated in the article ahead of the elections that “polls done from late 2014 puts the Labour party support consistently at 25 percent except for the temporary decline shown in the Don Anderson polls in January to 23.2 percent when political activity was low keyed. Based on error factors in past polls, the base for the JLP is around 28 percent which is consistent with polls done in 2015 that would give them 510,835 votes. This would be an increase of 105,677 over the 405,000 votes they received in 2011 and well over the 464,280 the PNP got then”.
“It is more difficult to say what the PNP numbers will work out at in the end but it should be at least close to their numbers for the last election. Added to this it is also difficult to see voter turnout of 53 percent in the 2011 being exceeded by much, if at all, which would put the PNP support at 25 percent of the electorate or a few thousand votes less than in 2011”.
“If the PNP does not increase their support by much, they will be relegated to the back benches of Parliament after Thursday’s polls. As it turned out the PNP based on preliminary results suffered a fall in the number of voters casting the ballot for them while the JLP increased theirs, but both parties failed to motivate persons who said they were going to vote to do so hence a fall in the level of participation”.
The results suggest one important factor and seems to explain why the turn out appear low even as the numbers are slightly higher than the tally for the 2011 elections. The elections seemed to have been focused around a third of the seats, maybe even less, some that were marginal and a few others that there was special interest in. Additionally, the infighting over candidates in some of the PNP’s constituencies may have had an overhang effect, thus negatively affecting its support.