If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn’t thinking. — General George S Patton

Group think is not thinking. Far too many of us in Jamaica, and particularly in the media, are victims of group think. The word “GroupThink” was coined by social psychologist Irving Janis in his seminal work, Victims of GroupThink (1972). “It occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgement”. (p 9)

Janis says, among other things: “Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanise other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision-making.”

GroupThink is the trump card political strategy of the People’s National Party (PNP). How is this made possible? Sadly, we the citizens, on the whole, don’t read enough and or have sufficient concerns for especially the political decision-making processes that determine the quality of our lives. This is a major cultural deficit. The dominance of a reading culture is a prerequisite for 21st century political sophistication. In their absence, groupthink invariably fills the vacuums.

What media scholar Herbert I Schiller calls “Mind Management” then becomes a premium. The imprisonment of people’s minds is the deadliest of crimes against humanity, in my view. National Hero Marcus Garvey, our great philosopher, warned us many decades ago inter alia: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.” [Made popular in song by the Gong.]

One of the ways to rid ourselves of groupthink, especially in politics, is to critically measure what influence peddlers say against what’s happening in our pockets and on our dinner tables. The great communicator, Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, invented one of the best decoders of political groupthink with this succinct and seminal question in the 1980 presidential election: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” This is a question every Jamaican must ask himself/herself before casting a ballot in 18 days.

Those, however, whose lives have been made worse — by far the majority of us — by this corrupt and incompetent Administration cannot succumb to trickery like most of the animals in George Orwell’s classic allegory Animal Farm. Modern-day Moses, the raven in Animal Farm, is an enemy of the people.

If nothing else, I find laughable the PNP’s fixation with the results of its most recent party standing in the RJR/Don Anderson Polls. It is even more jocular that some in the media have latched on to the feeding frenzy created by intellectual dwarfs in the PNP who subliminally teach that there is a predictive relationship between Anderson’s poll and how people will cast their votes on February 25.

The primary objective of political parties is gaining and the retention of State power. Therefore, I don’t blame the PNP for squeezing out every ounce of advantage from the propaganda effect that can be got from Anderson’s favourable poll findings.

Pollsters are not kingmakers. It is voters and what they do behind the ballot screen/curtain that decide the fate of political parties. Conclusions to the contrary are nothing more than groupthink, or what some credible social scientists call herd psychology.

We need to resist groupthink with every sinew in our bodies. Others have done it. We can also.

On November 3, 1948, the then Chicago Daily Tribune published this banner headline ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’. Why? They bought the mutterings of pundits and poll findings, as country people say, “chapter and verse [totally and without application of critical thought]”; plus they wanted to be first with the news. Truman’s defeat, according to groupthinkers was set in reinforced concrete. In fact, a New York Times article editorialised that “if Truman is nominated, he will be forced to wage the loneliest campaign in recent history”.

“Perhaps not surprisingly, then, Truman chose not to use the press as a vehicle for getting his message across. Instead, in July 1948, he embarked on an ambitious 22,000-mile ‘whistle stop’ railroad and automobile campaign tour. At every destination, Truman asked crowds to help him keep his job as president. His eventual success in the election of 1948 has been largely attributed to this direct interaction with the public and his appeal to the common voters as the political ‘underdog’. At the end of one of his campaign speeches, voices in the crowd could be heard yelling ‘Give ’em Hell, Harry!’ It didn’t take long for the phrase to catch on and become Truman’s unofficial campaign slogan.” (History Channel, November 3, 2015]

Truman won by 114 electoral college votes. The Chicago Daily Tribune went out of business, as did most of the pollsters who had predicted his political demise.

Recall also in 1936 when the Literary Digest and its so-called foolproof straw polls predicted that the then Republican candidate, Governor Alfred Landon of Kansas, was likely to be the overwhelming winner of the presidential election. Landon carried only Vermont and Maine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won 523 of 531 electoral college votes. London’s eight electoral college votes is a tie for the record low for a major party nominee since the 1850s. The Democrats joked, “As goes Maine, so goes Vermont.” The Literay Digest folded after its folly.

More recently, the fiasco of pollsters in the British election last year is still fresh in the minds of millions. The incumbent Conservative Leader David Cameron was said to be in a neck-and-neck race with Edward Miliband’s British Labour Party, the fraternal party of the PNP. Online polls days before election day showed a dead heat, but phone polls showed the Tories building a significant lead. David Cameron won the second largest margin of victory in British electoral history. How could this have happened is still a question being asked by statisticians and psephologists?

An article in the Daily Telegraph by Dan Hodges, titled ‘Why did the polls get it wrong at the general election?’ on June 24, 2015 explains the seeming puzzle within an enigma this way:

“Over the final 72 hours this discrepancy between the phone polls and online began to vanish. The polls suddenly began to cluster. The wide variation between the polling companies — variation that we had been witnessing for the best part of five years — mysteriously stopped. All the pollsters were suddenly, and miraculously, in agreement. The election would be a tie, give or take a single point in either direction.

“I say ‘strange’, but it wasn’t strange. It was wholly predictable. Cynical, disreputable, despicable. But predictable.

“It’s known in the polling industry as ‘herding’. And herding, not to put too fine a point on it, is when pollsters cheat. Each polling company knows that however accurate their results are, they will ultimately only be judged on one poll. The final poll before the election. Which presents them with a dilemma. What if their poll is at variance with all the other polls? What if that vital final poll looks like a rogue? What if they, alone, stand out from the crowd? What, God forbid, if they alone are wrong?

“The commercial and reputational risk is too great. So they herd. They deliberately manipulate their results to bring their own figures back into the pack. There is, they believe, safety in numbers. What’s more, there is even greater safety in being able to say an election is too close to call. ‘It was too close to call. How were we supposed to know? No one knew. We couldn’t call it. No one could call it.’ ”

According to the Daily Telegraph, “the pollsters lied”.

Recall also the recent general election in Canada. Some major polls and pundits said the “race was too close to call”. Others predicted a defeat for the then Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives, and a minority Government for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. Trudeau won a majority government.

In Greece pollsters also got it wrong last year: “Sunday was a bad day for pollsters, adding yet another poor performance following a string of recent high-profile polling misfires. This time the final round of polls on the Greek referendum showed the bailout deal failing by three to four percentage points, but the actual vote was not nearly as close. The “no” side prevailed by a 22-point margin — 61 to 39 per cent. (Huffington Post, July 8, 2015)

Pollsters bit the dust in Portugal’s national election last year.

Pollsters also got it wrong in the Iowa Caucus last week; just ask Donald Trump. Some might say, but those are all examples from Europe and North America. On the contrary, coo coo polls are not a Caucasian malady.

Former Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her coalition were tipped to win the September 7, 2015 general election in Trinidad and Tobago.

“With just weeks remaining until the September 7 General Election, the polls are showing a close race between the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the coalition People’s Partnership government (PP).

“The poll by Solution by Simulation, conducted between July 6 and July 22, shows the Kamla Persad-Bissessar-led PP narrowly winning with the seat projections at 21 to 20. The model suggests that there is a 93 per cent chance that the final result will be 21-20, with Tunapuna being the closest seat.” (

Sunday Observer, August 2, 2015)

When the election dust settled the PNM had the reins of power: ‘Kamla booted! – T&T Opposition wins close election’. “The main Opposition People’s National Movement (PNM) won the general election here yesterday, defeating the coalition People’s Partnership of Prime Minister Kamla Persad- Bissessar that came to power in 2010. The preliminary figures showed that the PNM won 22 of the 41 seats, with the remaining 19 going to the PP that had won 29 seats in the 2010 General Election.” (Jamaica Observer, September 8, 2015)

Some will doubtless argue that citizens in Trinidad and Tobago vote along ethnic lines, and that explains everything. Let’s assume, as country people say, “for argument’s sake [ease of conversion]”, that such a conclusion is correct. Then why did Don Anderson get it wrong in 2007 if polls have predictive powers as some pundits would want us to group think?

“More Jamaicans say they would vote for the People’s National Party (PNP) if general elections were held now, breaking a six-month statistical dead heat in support for both the ruling party and the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), the latest Observer-commissioned Don Anderson poll has found.

“According to Anderson and his team from Market Research Services Limited, when they asked the question, ‘If the national elections to elect a new Government were to be held today, which of the two political parties would you vote for?’ Twenty-nine per cent of those surveyed said they would vote for the PNP, while 25 per cent said the JLP.” (Jamaica Observer, June 15, 2007)

This election must be decided on issues that affect the lives of the majority of us ordinary folk; not testimonials from a few business people, or local and external special interests, whose motivations are rooted in personal and unenlightened greed. We who live in Jamaica 24 hours a day, 7 days of the week, and 365 days of the year — 366 in a leap year — cannot afford the luxury of suspension of reality.

Our social fabric is deteriorating rapidly. In an import-dependent economy, our dollar has been devalued by 40 per cent over the last four years. Last time I checked, the Jamaican dollar was $121.38 to US$1. In January 2012, when the PNP took power, our currency was $86.78 to US$1. The long-promised boom in exports has not happened. Exports are down seven per cent, says the Inter-American Development Bank.

Today we have a dollar that is worth less than one US cent. Some 1.1 million Jamaicans live below the poverty line. (The Gleaner, March 26, 2014)

Thirty-five per cent of Jamaicans live as squatters. (The Gleaner, July 11, 2012).

Last year 1,207 Jamaicans were murdered — the highest in five years.

Since the start of this year 79 Jamaicans have been slaughtered.

Some 70 per cent of those who contribute to the National Housing Trust get no housing benefit.

This Administration spends $900,000 monthly for maintenance of the Outameni property. Lennie Little-White is sitting happily having got a bailout.

This Administration incurred $120 million in a failed effort to privatise the Norman Manley International Airport.

It spent $250 million preparing for a general election last year that never happened.

“Five hundred of our best science and mathematics teachers migrated last year.” (RJR News, January 30, 2016)

The PNP has been in power for 23 of the last 27 years. They have wasted billions on phoney projects and nest-feathering schemes. All this is happening while there is a 26 per cent jump in the number of homeless people across the Island. (Jamaica Observer, January 14, 2016)

Did Prime Minister Simpson Miller see this heart-breaking story? “Effective today, Best Care Children’s Home in Kingston, which houses 43 children and adults with moderate to severe mental and physical disabilities, begins a process of closing its operation. The closure, which comes after four decades of operation, is due to lack of adequate funding.” (

RJR News, February 1, 2016) The sole priority of this Administration is themselves and their cronies.

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence. — Woodrow Wilson

Garfield Higgins in an educator and journalist. Send comments to the Observer or higgins160@yahoo.com.