According to the latest Bill Johnson polls, the Jamaica Labour Party is set to bury the Peoples National Party in the upcoming general elections. Still, the PNP can take some level of comfort in the fact Johnson’s polls are not always spot on in the past, especially far away from an election.
The latest poll findings by Bill Johnson done for Mello TV, shows the JLP with 38 percent support and the PNP with 19 percent. The gap is vast. If achieved, it would result in a vastly worse political beating in modern times that occurred in the 1980 elections, with 58 percent of the popular votes for the JLP. The above numbers would translate to 67 percent to Labour party compared to a humiliating 33 percent for the PNP, few seats if any, would be left in the hands of the losing party. The 2020 polls have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.
In 2019, IC Insider.com made the following observation. “According to the Bill Johnson polls, the PNP headed by Peter Phillips will do a better job than Peter Bunting in the next general election. Johnson points to a factor of the majority of persons saying the country is going in the wrong direction, a sure sign the JLP should be concerned. History is not kind to Johnson words”.
In 2016, ahead of the General elections, Johnson said, “Certainly, at this stage, it is going to be an orange sky on election night rather than a green sky.” Pollster Bill Johnson commented after his then-recent national poll found the PNP four percentage points ahead of the Jamaica Labour Party, The Gleaner reported. “The movement definitely appears to be an orange movement and not a green movement,” said Johnson. “Everything seems to be pointing in the direction of a strong PNP victory,” he added. As everyone knows, no such development took place, as the election ended with a narrow defeat for the PNP.
Dr. Peter Phillips – PNP leader
ICInsider.com stated that “two factors in the Johnson polls that are questionable. Jamaica has not seen a voter turnout close to 70 percent since the 1980s so any poll with that level of likely turnout has several persons lying to the pollsters as the turnout is unlikely to exceed 55 percent. In the last election, it was under 50 percent.”
In the Eastern Portland by-elections in 2019, when the pollster, Bill Johnson asked constituents which of the two political parties they would vote for if a by-election was held today, 33 percent of respondents said they would definitely mark their ballot for the JLP. Four percent say they probably would vote JLP, while 25 percent said definitely the PNP. Two percent said they would probably vote PNP.
Assuming the JLP got no more votes than those who said they would vote for them and the PNP got the probable ballots as well as the definite obes, the results would have been, JLP 33 percent PNP 27 percent. That would translate to a popular vote count of 55 percent to 45 percent and, therefore, a comfortable victory. The final outturn was a very narrow victory of 51 percent to 49 percent and not the considerable lead the Johnson polls suggested. To be fair to Bill Johnson, the results of the Eastern Portland seat, was within the sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.
Johnson’s latest polls suggest that voter turnout at the election is likely to be 57 percent. That would be much higher than the last general elections of about 50 percent of the voters’ list, culled for dead voters. In 2007, the records show that 61.5 percent of voters list voted 2011 was slightly lower at 52.4 percent, the projected turnout suggest by the Johnson poll numbers may not be that far off. The last point to note is that polls tend to undercount opposition support and inflate that of the governing party, by two to three percentage points.
