A high 77 per cent of voting age Jamaicans surveyed in the latest Bill Johnson poll have given the Government a positive rating for its performance, even as the Administration is beset by missteps that have resulted in the sacking of two Cabinet ministers and the reassignment of two others.

The number represents an 18 percentage points increase over the findings of a previous poll conducted by Johnson in March this year but which was not published due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the island.

The latest poll, commissioned by the Jamaica Observer, was conducted July 9 to 12, 2020 using a sample size of 1,200 Jamaicans. It has a sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 per cent.

When the pollsters asked people to rate the overall performance of the Government at this time, 34 per cent of respondents said “very good”, 43 per cent said “good”, 14 per cent said “neither good nor bad”, four per cent felt it was “bad”, three per cent said “very bad”, while two per cent said they “don’t know”.

Responses to the same question in the previous poll conducted March 12-15 were 23 per cent “very good”, 36 per cent “good”, 20 per cent “neither good nor bad”, six per cent “bad”, nine per cent “very bad”, and six per cent “don’t know”.

“Overall positive perceptions of the Government’s performance increased from 59 per cent in March to 77 per cent in July,” Johnson told the Observer.

The veteran pollster also noted that two-thirds of those who voted for the People’s National Party (PNP) in the 2016 General Election “rate the Government’s performance positive” with 22 per cent saying it was “very good” and 45 per cent rating it as “good”.

Interestingly, only seven per cent of respondents who said they voted for the PNP in 2016 rated the Government’s performance as “bad”, and six per cent said it was “very bad”.