Dear Editor,

When I look at the amount of work Robert “Big Rob” Miller is doing in St Catherine South Eastern I don’t see him losing to Colin Fagan in the next general election.

The seat was created in 1976 and was considered a safe People’s National Party (PNP) seat. But the last general election numbers clearly makes it a PNP marginal seat. The Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) only lost that seat by 528 votes in 2016 — after losing by 1,671; 305; and 1,141 votes  respectively  in 2011, 2007 and 2002.

Deeper analysis  of the numbers shows that, clearly, Colin Fagan is the problem and will lose this time around, because his leader and party are not popular enough to save him.

In 2011 Fagan received 8,260 votes — the second largest number of votes by a PNP candidate in 2011 when his party leader was popular and there was a national swing towards the PNP. He received 7,553 votes in 2016 and 7,292 votes as a newcomer in 2007.

I don’t see Colin Fagan getting over 7,200 votes in an upcoming election. So, to me, Robert Miller will get over 7,600 votes, but needs 8,300 votes to be sure of a victory.

The PNP will try to hang on to this seat by putting in a high-profile candidate like Damion Crawford. So Colin Fagan could go to St Catherine North Eastern, because clearly Oswest Senior Smith is no match for Leslie Campbell.

Also, Fagan could settle for a deal as being the next mayor of Portmore, replacing Leon Thomas.

Teddylee GrayOcho Rios, St Annteddylee.gray@gmail.com

I truly hope the JLP will take this seat seriously because the PNP received its largest number of votes to date  in 1980 when candidate Leroy Cooke polled 9,856 votes, losing to Kingsley Sangster 17,597, the only time the JLP won that seat.