JLP favourite - Golding's party may win 32 seats or more, Portia's PNP could force tie

Byron Buckley, Associate Editor

The Bruce Golding-led Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) appears on course to win Jamaica's 15th general election in which 1.3 million electors will choose 60 members to sit in the House of Representatives tomorrow.

Analysis by The Sunday Gleaner team indicates that the JLP will win at least 32 seats, while the People's National Party (PNP) will be victorious in 28.

This prediction is based on research that shows the PNP going into tomorrow's national polls with 21 safe seats, against 20 for the JLP. The PNP, it appears, has the advantage in a further seven electoral contests; while the JLP, it seems, has the advantage in eight electoral races.

Race for battleground seats

Sunday Gleaner analysts have identified four battleground seats that, if all won by the JLP, could push the party's seat tally to 36. Conversely, if the PNP wins all these marginal seats, it could claim victory with 32 seats. If the unthinkable happens, and the parties evenly share the battleground seats, there will be a tie, requiring the Governor-General to broker an interim administration until an election is rerun.

Excepting these possible developments, The Sunday Gleaner's prediction of a JLP victory is based on the positive performance of the Labour Party in recent weeks. According to the latest Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnsonpoll, more electors (41 per cent) said they preferred candidates of the JLP, than the PNP's, to become their Members of Parliament (MPs). Thirty-five per cent of persons interviewed believed the PNP candidates would perform better as MPs. Twenty-four per cent of respondents are unsure which candidate would represent them better. The poll, with an error margin of plus or minus three per cent, was conducted on August 25 and 26.

This has been a spectacular comeback on the part of the JLP candidates, who, six weeks ago, were trailing their PNP rivals by eight percentage points in the area of who was better suited to perform the job as MP. The JLP candidates closed the gap between themselves and their PNP counterparts in Johnson's August 18 poll findings. A week later, in a poll conducted among 1,008 persons in 84 communities islandwide, Johnson found that the PNP candidates lost five points in their MP ratings, while the JLP gained one point.

The relative standing of candidates mirrors the popular standings of the main political parties, which Johnson measure at 42 per cent for the JLP and 38 per cent for the PNP - recording the opening up of a four-point lead by the Opposition party during the last week before election day.

Bruce would be better pm

In addition to mounting this beach head, in the closing days of the election campaign, JLP leader Bruce Golding surpassed PNP president Portia Simpson Miller's rating as the person electors think "would do a better job as Prime Minister". Forty-one per cent of respondents chose Golding above Simpson Miller at 40 per cent. Golding achieved this feat by eroding a 14-point lead by Simpson Miller in Johnson's poll findings in June.

Commenting on the change in fortunes for the PNP, political analyst Charlene Sharpe-Pryce faults the party for running a poor campaign.

"I am not expecting them to be running a campaign based on a single person. That is from the Bustamante and Norman Manley era," reasons the Northern Caribbean University lecturer. "I would hope that wehave passed that era and that we are running on issues and not personality. That shows the maturity of a system, and if the PNP insists on running their campaign on a personality, then they are going to alienate a significant sector of the society."

Another example of the JLP's positive momentum is Johnson's latest findings which place the JLP and PNP even at 41 per cent in responses to 'Which of the two political parties do you think would do the best job of governing Jamaica at this time?' Two weeks before, the PNP was ahead of the JLP by six points. The lead was nine points in July and 12 points in June.