Heyliger lost a quarter of his voter-support

GREAT BAY – The United People’s party may have become the largest party in Monday’s elections, but its party-leader Theo Heyliger suffered a personal defeat at the hands of the voters. He lost more than 25 percent of his voter-support, as the table with this article shows.

The best performer in the elections was DP-Minister Emil Lee, who outvoted his party leader Sarah Wescot-Williams by more than 200 votes and saw his performance in office rewarded with 667 votes – 134 percent more than the votes he won in his inaugural elections in 2014.

One may well wonder about the effect of the new parties on this election. Though they did not win a single seat, between them they won 1,700 votes, more than enough for one seat and probably good for two. The Christian Party was the best performer with 846 votes, just short of the quota of 966 to win a seat.

What else does our vote comparison show? If we take a closer look at the ship jumpers of 2014 – Leona Marlin-Romeo, Cornelius de Weever, Silvio Matser and Maurice Lake – we see that the electorate did not appreciate their shenanigans. Matser lost 30 percent of his support, Maurice Lake 25.5 and Marlin-Romeo 22. Cornelius de Weever took the biggest hit: he saw 57.9 percent of his support evaporate, dropping from 378 to just 159 votes.

For Maria Buncamper-Molanus, her second attempt at a return to politics failed as well. Bogged down by a criminal conviction for tax fraud and forgery, the former minister of public health tumbled from the 204 votes that were just not enough to capture a seat to 156 – a loss of 23.5 percent. With those votes she did not even come near a seat this time around.

Cornelius de Weever is the biggest loser!

Of the twenty candidates we used for the vote comparison, only six did better than in 2014; the other fourteen all lost voter support – from 0.7 percent up to De Weever’s disastrous tumble of 57.9 percent.