SE St Elizabeth victor lashes ‘flawed’ opinion polls

BY GARFIELD MYERS Editor-at-Large, South/ Central Bureau

Thursday, January 05, 2012

SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — HE is basking in his victory but the People's National Party's candidate for South East St Elizabeth Richard Parchment is also angry at what he describes as "flawed" opinion polling, which caused panic among supporters in the days leading up to the December 29 general election.

Parchment is particularly annoyed with the Ian Boxhill-led organisation whose poll, commissioned by the RJR/TVJ media organisation and conducted between December 16 and 18, showed Parchment trailing his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) opponent Frank Witter by 8.3 per cent.

Parchment claimed the poll finding forced him and others among his campaign team to radically change tack from trying to win over new voters to concentrating on soothing despairing supporters who contemplated "not bothering to vote" because of the negative opinion poll prediction.

"The Boxhill poll finding was completely contrary to what we were hearing and feeling on the ground but when some supporters heard it, they started to waver; some started to say 'Parchie, it nuh mek no sense we vote, for hear dem sey yu ago lose anyhow'," said Parchment.

"So we had to drop plans to go out in the field over those last couple of days and we spent a lot of time trying to comfort and encourage people who were already with us... it was a dangerous situation," he added.

As it turned out, 9,907 people in South East St Elizabeth voted for Parchment and the PNP against 8,927 for Witter and the JLP. The voter turnout was approximately two-thirds of the 27,617 registered voters in the constituency, much higher than the just over 50 per cent turnout that was the national average.

"So from an opinion poll less than two weeks before election, which said we were behind by nearly nine per cent, we end up winning by eight per cent. We are talking about a 17 per cent difference. That's ridiculous and unacceptable, the pollsters need to seriously check themselves," said Parchment.

He believes the opinion pollsters may have got it wrong in SE St Elizabeth because of unscientific methodologies on the ground.

"Either that or somebody was trying to serve a political end," he mused.

According to the 50-year-old councillor for the strongly pro- PNP Myersville Division, informal reports suggested that the SE St Elizabeth constituency pollsters concentrated much of their attention on Junction, the main town in SE St Elizabeth and on the main road from Nain, through Junction, Top Hill, Southfield, Malvern to Leeds.

"If that is what they did, they were bound to get it wrong, because the main concentration of PNP support in South East St Elizabeth is not on the main but in the remote farming districts off the main," said Parchment, who will be entering Parliament for the first time.

He listed a number of communities scattered about and close to the Santa Cruz Mountains, which for political purposes are listed in the Myersville and Malvern divisions where access is troublesome because of rough terrain and poor road surfaces. These include Dalton, Hopeton, Russells, Schoolfield, Warminister, and New Building.

"The fact is that in some of these communities, whole blocks of people voted only for the PNP. If the poll sampling did not draw from these areas, then they were bound to get it wrong. And if it was felt that they could get a sampling of these people based on shoppers coming to Junction, then they would still get it wrong, because most people in the Myersville and Malvern divisions don't shop in Junction. They go to Santa Cruz, which is in the neighbouring constituency of North East St Elizabeth," said Parchment.

"The fact is that if you don't have an understanding of the inner workings of the constituency, then it is difficult to do a proper and accurate poll in South East St Elizabeth," he added.

Noting that there were similar "erroneous" poll findings for several rural constituencies islandwide, and that nationally the findings had predicted a "very close" election when in fact the PNP won by a 2-1 seat majority, Parchment suggested that pollsters needed to rethink and reformulate their approach.

They should also seek advice from politicians "on the ground" like himself, he said.

"When it comes to South East St Elizabeth, they need to come down and sit with me and let me advise [them] on how to get an accurate and representative sample," said Parchment.

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SE St Elizabeth victor lashes ‘flawed’ opinion polls