COUNTING HEADS AT RALLIES

Apr 06, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

---

Political rallies are never a good gauge about the support of political parties in the regions where these rallies are kept. All political parties bus in supporters to their rallies.
There is no renting of crowds. No one is paid to go to these rallies. People go there voluntarily to show support for their parties or simply to hear what the politicians have to say. Not everyone at a rally is a supporter. Some go for the entertainment; some go to listen, some go to make up their minds as to who to vote for.
People are mobilized in the areas near to where the meetings are held. But a great part of the crowd at political rallies is not from the area where the rally is being held.
Recently, the APNU-AFC coalition held a political rally at Whim. A great many of those present were part of a massive motorcade from Georgetown, East Coast and the West Coast of Berbice.
A great part of that crowd was not from the Whim area. But there were persons from other nearby areas and from other parts of Berbice. The persons who went there were overwhelmingly supporters of the coalition.
What many political observers were interested in however was the turnout from Whim since this is the village of Moses Nagamootoo who is the designated Prime Ministerial candidate for the coalition.
Observers were interested to see what sort of support he would pull from Whim since one of the assumptions that led to the formation of the coalition was a certain political arithmetic. The coalition is premised on the belief that if the AFC can bring its 11% and APNU holds its 40%, there is the possibility that the coalition can win the Presidency.
This assumption of course ignores the fact that large numbers of supporters of the PPP did not vote at the last elections and therefore if these persons turn out in their numbers, then this throws the entire equation into imbalance.
The coalition’s arithmetic also fails to consider the fact that the AFC by joining with APNU has effectively degraded its third force status. Many of the supporters of the AFC are persons who wanted to be part of a third force and saw in the AFC that option.
With the AFC now part of a coalition with APNU, many of the former PPP supporters are going to return to the bosom of the PPP. That is another thing that the architects of the coalition did not factor into their political arithmetic.
In this context, it was important to test the AFC’s support in Berbice and particularly its support amongst East Indians, the majority of whom in past elections supported the PPP/C. The assumption also was that Whim was also a good testing ground since if East Indians came out from this area it would signal that the AFC was holding its base in Berbice and therefore could deliver the 11% that is expected of it.
The fact of the matter is that this latter assumption is based on false premise concerning just where the AFC draws the bulk of its support in Berbice.
While the AFC did make significant inroads into the PPP/C’s support base in the Whim area, an examination of the 2011 results would show that the spread of AFC support was not confined or dominated by any few areas. AFC’s Berbice support was widely spread.
It drew support, marginal as it may be in terms of the overall vote, from many areas and not just the Whim-Port Mourant area where it did far better than expected.
The bussing in of crowds posed a serious problem in terms of assessing this factor of the AFC holding its support base. In fact there were many who left with the view that the AFC did not demonstrate at the rally that its support base in Berbice was intact.
Rallies are however not good indicators of specific areas of support. Rallies are what the name implies. They are intended to rally the supporters, to bring them out from all over in their numbers and to drum into their heads the fact that victory is in sight. This is what rallies are about.
Counting heads at political rallies is therefore not an effective gauge as to the division of the electorate. But they do create illusions amongst persons. And illusions can move people in untold ways.
In the last elections, APNU had a low keyed campaign. They did not have impressive numbers at their rallies, except for their final rally which had the largest turnout of any rally they had hosted then or what the PNC/R had ever hosted in the past. That last rally was massive.
The otherwise relative low-keyed campaign by APNU In 2011 had the effect of lulling the supporters of the PPP/C into complacency. These supporters assumed that the PPP/C would cruise to victory and so tens of thousands of them did not turn out to vote.
That is not likely to happen again.  Therefore the bussing in persons to rallies may actually hurt the coalition more than it benefits them.

---

---