TODAY Poll Voters reward the Democratic Party
GREAT BAY – What will the political landscape look like once all the votes have been counted tonight? Like in 2010 and 2014, Today conducted a poll, for which UTS made its Chippie network available. Due to technical issues, the poll could only be run for two days, giving us a limited sample, while a poll conducted this way has also other obvious limitations that we’ll explain below.
Nevertheless, based on the outcome of the poll, we see a dead heat between the Democratic Party and the United People’s party – with 30 and 31 percent of the votes cast respectively. The National Alliance scored 23 percent and the United St. Maarten party 10 percent.
Of the startup parties, the St. Maarten Christian Party scored 3 percent, the People’s Progressive Alliance, One St. Maarten People Party and the St. Maarten Development Movement 1 percent each. Hope got stuck on zero percent. Without a dramatic difference in the real election results, none of these parties will win a seat in parliament.
The numbers for the political establishment tell a different story: a strong comeback from the Democratic Party, where voters seem to reward the efforts of Public Health Minister Emil Lee for the construction of the new hospital and a number of other initiatives.
All this goes at the expense of the UP and the NA. The USp – with four candidates with a criminal record on its list (Maria Bunmcamper-Molanus, Silvio Matser, Louella Rog and Romain Laville) , do not seem to be gathering any steam after its 2014 inaugural election result.
But what do poll results tell us? Compare these numbers; in 2014, our poll gave the UP 55 percent, DP 17, NA 14 and USp 9. The result? UP 42.6, DP 16.2, NA 27.8 and USp 11.3.
Further back in time in 2010, our poll gave the UP 58 percent, NA 23 and DP 11. The result? UP 36.1, NA 45.9 and DP 17.1.
To say that the die is cast is presumptuous and we won’t go there. But we do note some similarities between these polls. In all polls the UP scored far better than in the real elections, while the NA outperformed the polls on both occasions in 2010 and 2014. The DP did slightly worse in 2014 and significantly better in 2010.
While our poll shows a dead heat between the UP and the DP, the electorate will decide today about the real outcome.
However, just suppose our poll result is close to tonight’s reality. What would the political landscape then look like? For sure, in would put the Democratic Party in the driver’s seat in the center of power once more, where it is able to pick and choose its partners for the new coalition.
The current coalition of NA, DP and USp would have 63 percent of the vote – enough to extend its streak in office. The UP will not be able to form a coalition with the USp; it only has a chance to team up with the NA and/or the DP.
As we have seen in previous occasions, anything goes once the results of the elections are more or less clear. In 2014, NA, DP and USp signed an agreement like grease lightning during the night after the polls closed, only to be wrong-footed by ship jumpers Cornelius de Weever and Leona Marlin-Romeo. Both ship jumpers are now on the list of the UP.
A rough calculation of the seat distribution based on our poll and assuming a voter turnout of 70 percent would give the following picture, keeping in mind that based on this turnout-level a party needs 1,041 votes to win one seat outright. UP would have 4,839 votes and 5 seats (4 outright, one residual seat), DP (4,683 votes) would have 4 seats, the NA 4 (3 outright and 1 residual seat) and the USp 2 (1 outright, 1 residual).
This 5-4-4-2 outcome would allow the following coalition combinations: UP-DP, UP-NA, NA-DP or NA-DP-USp and a combination of the UP with the NA or the DP plus the USp.
Our poll has several limitations; first of all, there were just 95 votes cast, a rather small sample. We also do not know if votes were cast by eligible voters. However, every Chippie-user was allowed to vote only once. Double votes were eliminated and based on the limited number of reactions there has not been a rush to buy Chippie sim-cards in an attempt to distort the outcome.
Having said that, we realize that today the power is in the hands of 22,302 eligible voters. If just 70 percent of them casts a vote (as has been the case in previous elections), it means that close to one third of the population is not taking part in the democratic process. That should be a real concern for the fifteen candidates that will win a seat today in the third parliament of Country St. Maarten.
