QUESTIONS are being raised about the seeming disappearance of Trinidad & Tobago pollster, political scientist Derek Ramsamooj from the Jamaica scene for the September 3 General Election, after he successfully predicted the result of the 2016 poll.

There was even talk that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), which had commissioned polls done by Ramsamooj for the 2016 election, had separated from him, but that was quickly dismissed by JLP officials when the Jamaica Observer contacted them last week.

In fact, officials revealed that Ramsamooj was very much in the thick of things, and was a part of the set-up influencing the organisation’s approach going into the next general election.

The novel coronavirus has been given as the reason for Ramsamooj’s absence from Jamaica, but he is still involved in interpreting (or calculating) the data submitted to him by those doing field work. The experienced pollster has also done work in Grenada, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Belize, Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Anguila, and St Kitts and Nevis.

JLP officials declined to speak on the matter publicly when the Sunday Observer reached them for a comment, but one high-ranking figure said that the party’s reliance on Ramsamooj’s “guiding hand” was even better now.

“The man is playing his role same way,” the JLP senior man said. “He polled the by-election that involved Mrs (Annmarie) Vaz last year (March) and he quietly does work for us,” the official went on.

It was the poll done by Ramsamooj and revealed less than a week before the February 25 General Election of 2016 that had eyes opened wide, when it emerged that the JLP was fancied to beat the People’s National Party (PNP), as the then Opposition was riding a late momentum going into the election.

At the time, Ramsamooj said that marginal seats held the key to victory, and errors committed by either the JLP or PNP could spell disaster for the party making the errors. The poll found that 51.76 per cent of electors would vote for the JLP in 13 marginal seats, and 48.24 per cent would mark the ‘X’ for the PNP. At the time, the pollster said that he and his team had interviewed 1,859 people. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus four per cent.

“The political momentum at this point is leaning favourably towards the JLP forming the next Government. However, the winning of an election is based on the resources — financial and human — and the [effectiveness] of the election machinery [on election day],” Ramsamooj told the Observer‘s senior associate editor Pete Sankey in an interview published three days before the election.

Ramsamooj listed the 13 marginal seats then as St James Central, St James West Central, St Mary Western, St Mary South Eastern, St Andrew East Rural, St Andrew West Rural, Hanover Eastern, St Andrew Eastern, St Thomas Eastern, St Ann North Western, St Catherine East Central, St Elizabeth South Eastern, and St Elizabeth South Western.

He had said that any mistake by either party 48 hours before the election would amount to “a political disaster”.

The senior JLP officials said that polls or not, the party was prepared to strengthen its hand and unleash a whipping on its older rival.

“We are not depending on polls. A poll is a mere snapshot. We are putting more into performance, and following our campaign strategy,” the official said.

“We are comfortable in 34 seats and we intend to make inroads in others. Seasoned PNP campaigners may not return to Parliament, some of them who have served up to three terms,” the official added.

The JLP believes that it can wrest the St James Southern, Hanover Western, St Ann North Western, and Clarendon Northern seats held by the PNP before Parliament was dissolved earlier this month.