THE Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) yesterday put a brave face on new poll numbers showing its slippage in voter support, insisting that what was important were the figures showing that the majority of Jamaicans want a change of government.

But the ruling People’s National Party (PNP), in a dead heat with the JLP in the race for the Government, after a three-point gain in popular support since April, was ebullient about the findings.

“I have always said politics is not a 100 yards dash,” PNP president, Prime Minister P J Patterson told members of the party’s National Executive Council (NEC) at a meeting at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston yesterday. “It is a marathon and you must have staying power.”

“That is why the PNP has endured for 64 years now and that is why the PNP remains the best vehicle for change and social progress,” Patterson added.

In a poll for the Observer, conducted at the end of June, the Stone Organisation found support at 27.6 per cent and 27.2 per cent for the JLP and the PNP respectively. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent.

In the case of the JLP, the numbers represented a 3.2 percentage points slippage since the previous survey in April when the party had the support of 30.8 per cent of voting-aged Jamaicans. On the other hand, the PNP had a gain of 3.4 percentage points.

“Last year this time we were seven points behind. This year, they say we are (now) 0.4 (per cent behind) and we don’t step on the gas yet,” Patterson quipped in NEC remarks. “One more river to cross. If you are ready, I am ready.”

Patterson, who has said that he will call general elections by year-end, has, in the past, made similarly tantalising comments about the date without being anymore specific.

Analysts and party sources said though, that these new numbers could embolden the prime minister to consider going to the election earlier rather than later so as to avoid any erosion.

“There are a number of options facing the prime minister and the Stone results add a new perspective to things,” said a senior PNP official. “At the very least, confidence will now be up in the party.”

Yesterday, the JLP’s deputy leader, Audley Shaw, playing down the JLP’s slippage, insisted that these were not the most significant numbers to emerge from the survey.

“The most significant aspect of these polls as far as the JLP is concerned is that the great majority of people want a change of government,” Shaw told the Observer. “Twice the number of persons who support the PNP say they want to see a change of government.”

Shaw’s reference was to the 51 per cent of the people who said they would like to see a change of government in the election. Yet, this was 11 percentage points down from the 62 per cent who, eight months ago, said they wanted a change of government.

Shaw did not offer an explanation of why, despite the obvious disenchantment with the Government, support was not overwhelmingly flocking to his party.

In the latest poll, the last of whose findings were published in the Sunday Observer yesterday, 25 per cent said they will not vote in the election. Another 15.6 per cent indicated that they had not yet made up their minds and 2.9 per cent would not declare their choice of party.

Both JLP and PNP officials agreed that it was among these latter groups that the election would be either won on lost.

“The battle ground is that 16 to 18 per cent,” said the PNP’s general-secretary, Maxine Henry-Wilson.

The JLP’s Shaw said “there is a silent, but deliberate group” among those who claim not to have made up their minds, but who really were “going to vote this government out”.

“The PNP is in for a big surprise,” Shaw said.

For the PNP, the new poll numbers were its best in two years and represent a substantial recovery from its low point in November 2000 when its support was 15 per cent and the JLP’s 17 per cent, the first time the Opposition had taken the lead.

Henry-Wilson, who like the PNP’s campaign manager, Dr Paul Robertson left the Government to concentrate on the party’s re-election, said that the recovery was the result “of just straight, plain hard work on the ground”.

“We have been putting our machinery in place,” she said, adding that the Observer/Stone numbers were “within the margin of error” of what the PNP’s internal polls were indicating.

“We haven’t started campaigning yet,” Henry-Wilson said.

On the other hand, she said, the JLP has been campaigning for more than a year, and had apparently reached its zenith and was now in reversal.

“I have no strategic advice to offer them,” she said.

Much of her party’s own campaign, the PNP general-secretary suggested, would be targeted to the uncommitted, who the party recognised were the strong issues-oriented voters.

“We have spent a lot of time developing our strategies,” she said. “We believe we have an excellent platform.”

Despite the PNP’s gain in the poll and his own party’s reversal, Shaw argued that policy failures by the Government, particularly in creating jobs and managing crime, would mean a JLP landslide in the election.

Said Shaw: “We believe that the people of Jamaica will make the right decision when the right time comes. The election will not even be close. The JLP will win at least 40 seats.”