In politics, as in so many other spheres of life, an ugly win is better than a pretty loss, and so Mr Pearnel Charles Jr will be celebrating his victory over the hapless Mr Dereck Lambert, who ran as an independent in Clarendon South Eastern on Monday.

In the virtual no-contest, Mr Charles took 6,845 votes to Mr Lambert’s 735, which represents 18.3 per cent of the total constituency electorate of 41,308. This, of course, is another example of the usual low voter turnout in by-elections in Jamaica.

However, the real story from this March 2, 2020 parliamentary by-election is how difficult it is to get voters to take by-elections seriously, even when they are contested hard by both major political parties, let alone when they are not, as in the case of Clarendon South Eastern.

For their part, Mr Charles and his ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) tried to make a run of it, unleashing the party’s full political machine and turning up on election day with almost all the top brass of MPs and officers.

Mr Charles and the JLP, therefore, cannot be faulted for not trying to drum up excitement, and while the victory would have been sweeter had Mrs Patricia Duncan Sutherland of the People’s National Party (PNP) not boycotted, it is still indeed a victory.

The sociologists, social anthropologists, psychoanalysts and even the political scientists are perhaps better able to extrapolate the reasons that voters think so little of by-elections, though it seems to be generally accepted that they feel the results won’t change the status quo and so can’t be bothered.

The biggest voter turnout in recent by-elections was the 54.34 per cent, or 19,734 people who cast their ballots out of a total electorate of 36,315 in the April 4, 2019 poll in Portland Eastern, which was hotly contested by the successful Mrs Ann-Marie Vaz of the JLP and Mr Damion Crawford of the PNP.

Even then, the contest was shrouded in controversy; attracted the attention of the main pollsters, with big media coverage; and the parties spent together over $100 million, at a time when the stakes were high for both sides.

The next best was the 39.2 per cent turnout, or 29,253 electors from a possible 74,454, in the October 30, 2017 by-election in St Mary South Eastern which pitted the victorious Dr Norman Dunn of the JLP against the PNP’s Dr Shane Alexis.

Indeed, Mr Mark Golding of the PNP can consider himself fortunate that the turnout to elect him in the by-election on that same day was 30.11 per cent, or 7,085 of the total electorate of 23,533 in the St Andrew Southern constituency.

At the same time, Dr Angela Brown Burke was less fortunate to be elected from a mere 25.94 per cent, or 6,659 of the electorate of 25,670 also on the same day, October 30, in St Andrew South Western.

Both Mr Golding and Mrs Brown Burke could console themselves that their by-elections were seriously overshadowed by the St Mary South Eastern contest, a seat which the JLP sorely needed.

Still, in the following year, on March 5, 2018, only 7,337 voters out of a possible total of 30,216, or 24.28 per cent bothered to show up at the polls to elect Dr Nigel Clarke of the JLP in the safe St Andrew North Western constituency.

Our electoral democracy truly is still a work in progress.