POLLSTER Don Anderson has said that the outcome of the next general elections could depend heavily on the play-off between the groundwork being done by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) in constituencies and the ‘Portia factor’ which has held sway in the campaigning strategy of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP).

“The question to a larger effect is perhaps the ‘Portia factor’ in the constituencies versus the groundwork the JLP has done in the constituences, but to me based on everything I have seen the elections are likely to be close,” Anderson told a luncheon meeting of the Lions Club of Kingston at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel on Wednesday.

Noting that his firm Market Research Services Limited has conducted four national polls for 2007, Anderson said a trend was now beginning to emerge.

“We are now beginning to see a trend. In my estimation the election is going to be a close election because the constituency by constituency emphasis has never been greater,” he said.

According to Anderson, the latest polls which were made public on CVM Television’s Direct “is beginning to help shape projections for the likely outcome of the elections”.

Anderson said polls done between the last week of May and the first week of June for the first time in seven months showed a widening gap, with the PNP moving four percentage points upward and the JLP remaining at 25 percent.

“Every pollster wants to have a fairly long time period of information and the last poll certainly is helping us to formulate a position as to how the elections will go,” he noted.

He said, however, that he was far from ready to make a direct pronouncement as his research team will be conducting two more polls in the time leading up to the elections.

“I have four polls now but I’m still not happy that I have enough data on which to make a really reliable projection as to the outcome of the next election. The information is trending in a certain direction and when we do the next two we believe we will have substantive material that we can say how the elections are likely to go,” Anderson said.

The first Anderson-led polls in February of this year showed the JLP enjoying a one per cent lead over the PNP, but a May poll showed that popular support for the parties was 25 per cent each, effectively locking each party in a statistical dead heat. Another poll in June showed the PNP breaking away from the JLP with a four-point lead.

But Anderson sounded a note of caution on the number of “uncommitted voters” which in February stood at 49 per cent.

According to the pollster, while this number “has narrowed down a bit it is still very high”.

He said the uncommitted, which predominantly comprises the 18 to 35 age group, would prove the toughest challenge yet and could sway the outcome of the next general elections.

“The persons who are now 18 to 35 have grown up knowing nothing but a PNP Government; they have also grown up at a time when they have witnessed a certain amount of divisiveness and infighting from the Jamaica Labour Party especially for the leadership, and effectively what that has done is they may be disillusioned with the PNP but not enough to hold on to the JLP and you are finding that that group is cemented,” he explained.

Classifying the cohort as “hardcore” and “difficult to budge” the pollster said they “could determine where the elections will head”.

Meantime, Anderson said he was was not in support of pollsters conducting polls and then ‘writing columns about their findings’.

“I believe this is wrong,” he said.

He said it was essential that pollsters not allow their political persuasions to come out in the data they present.

“Present the data and let the chips fall where they may,” Anderson advised.