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The PPP has the service of a Canadian pollster

Nov 06, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

 

 
This columnist has been reliably informed that the PPP has acquired the services of a pollster who lives in Canada. His function is to conduct constant surveys so that a determination could be made about an early election. The arrangement is inherently flawed, but the opposition should welcome the man’s operation.
First, the gentleman is a PPP supporter. Secondly, will he allow such a political leaning to affect his results? Thirdly, would he want to be seen as the constant harbinger of bad news if the surveys are against a PPP victory and therefore will feel pressured to offer PPP leaders bogus information?
Fourthly, would the extremists inside the PPP accept his competence if his numbers are not to their liking?
The nature of the PPP will not allow this man to do a professional job. Let us assume that the guy, even though he is Indian-oriented and prefers the PPP to be in government, wants to do scientifically-based surveys. Will he be allowed the latitude that he would need? I doubt it very much.
Pollsters when employed by political parties cannot tell their employers what they want to hear. They have to do scientific surveys. As a matter of policy, political parties hire professional polling houses.
If the PPP wants to know if it can reclaim a parliamentary majority, it has to search for independent survey organizations. I believe the PPP will not do that.  So what it will end up with is the pollster telling them what they want to hear. Unlike the fake pollster who was exposed ten years ago and is now relegated to the letter pages by the two independent dailies, a survey in Guyana has to take in the demographic changes in Guyana.
Over sixty percent of Guyanese are under twenty-two years of age. You have to divide those numbers geographically, by rural and urban, and ethnically by Indian, African, Amerindian and Coloured, if you are going to get a representative sample. Then comes the essence of the poll – the questions.
A poll on a specific development is quite easy because the number of questions is basically limited.
The example is the US Government shutdown. The issue was the shutdown. National elections are a complexly different situation. The number of questions you have to ask your respondents is quite a lot. It is not a complex issue at all. It is pointless asking a citizen which of the two parties you will vote for. By the shape of the question, you do not allow them any scope; you have forced them to pick.
The dilemma the PPP has with its Canadian man is that the PPP does not have an ordinary psychology and this will create headaches for the poor pollster. The PPP leadership will not tell its Canadian employee who is going to be the presidential and prime ministerial candidate.
What happens then is when the gentleman finds that a majority will vote for the PPP, he transmits the information to Freedom House and there is jubilation. But then the crash comes when the names on the list become public.
What happens when those same persons who say they will vote for the PPP find out in six weeks’ time that a man in his seventies is the prime ministerial candidate and is running for the sixth time in that slot? What happens when they look at the list and see people who are nearing their seventies and have been on the list the past twenty-three years?
If you say to PPP leaders that they lost votes in 2011 because they failed to replace Sam Hinds with a vibrant charismatic professional, they will laugh at you. If you tell them that going again with Ramotar is a huge gamble, they will laugh at you. If you tell them that   in 2013 or 2014, they have to remove from the slate names that will not excite young Guyanese who are the majority voters, they will laugh at you.
The reason they will laugh is because the PPP does not have an ordinary psychology. In Trinidad and the USA in forthcoming national elections, leaders will have to fight frenetically to win over voters. In Guyana, the PPP’s psychology informs them that their property – the East Indians – will always vote for the cup.
It doesn’t matter if Sam plays it again. It doesn’t matter if Kwame McCoy will be the poster boy. Indians will vote for the PPP, because Indians are the PPP’s children. Of course it makes no sense having the Canadian pollster around. But then again does anything the PPP does make sense?

 

 

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