Despite around 70% voter turnout at the last general elections, only about 12% of citizens identify with political parties in Guyana, according to a 2009 study.
The study, The Political Culture of Democracy in Guyana, 2009: The Impact of Governance, which was conducted as part of the 2008/9 AmericasBarometer series of surveys under the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) found that “the country displays the lowest levels of party identification in the Americas.” Further, of the 12.2% of citizens who identify with a party, most of them identify with either the PPP or the PNCR, which both have strong support among those identifying with them.
The study noted that one of the primary characteristics of Guyanese democracy is political competition based on ethnicity. In this regard, it examined voting preferences at the 2006 general elections by ethnic group and observed that 68.7% of Indians voted for the PPP/C while only 3.7% of Afro-Guyanese voted for it. Alternatively, it noted that 75.1% of Afro-Guyanese voted for the PNCR compared with 1.7% of Indo-Guyanese. “Therefore, it appears that the two main ethnic groups in Guyana have very different party preferences,” it said. The AFC, the study said, gathers votes from all ethnic groups but mainly Mixed-race citizens (39.6%) and Afro-Guyanese (31.7%).
Meanwhile, it was found that identification with political parties among citizens fell from 19.4% in 2006, when the last survey was done. While it was noted that the levels of party identification in the Americas is quite low, with percentages below 50% in most countries, the difference between Guyana and the other countries—with the exception of Guatemala—was described as statistically significant. In the Americas, the country with the highest levels of party identification is the Dominican Republic, with 70.3% of its population identifying with a political party, followed by Paraguay, Jamaica and Uruguay.
An examination of the distribution of the 12.2% who identified with political parties found that both the PPP/C and the PNCR had similar levels of citizens identifying with them, at 48.2% and 47.5%, respectively. The finding “articulates the leading position of these two parties in the Guyanese party system,” the study noted. It added that alternatively, 5.9% of Guyanese identified with the AFC, while 0.2% identified with “other.”
The study also looked at PPP/C and PNCR party identification patterns across regions as well as the strength of that identification.
In the case of the ruling PPP/C, it found that identification with it occurred mainly in Regions 1, 7, 8, 9 and 2, where there was a level of 80% of identification. At the other extreme, in regions 4 and 10 only about 30% of persons who identified with a party identified with the PPP/C. The remaining regions placed in intermediate positions, with percentages between 51.5% and 63.6%.
A majority of those who identified with the PPP/C held a strong (43.1%), or very strong (13.8%) identification with the party, while 18.0% held a weak identification, 6.1% a very weak identification and 19.0% a neither strong nor weak identification.
With regard to the PNCR, the study noted that its supporters were concentrated in specific regions, with Region 4 registering 61.3% identification among people who identify with a political party. In Region 5, the percentage is recorded at 48.5%, while in regions 1, 7, 8 and 9 the level of identification is 11.1%. In Region 2, identification with the party was measured at 20.8%, in Region 3 at 34.1%, in Region 6 at 39.0% and in Region 10 at 38.5%.
It was found that 33.6% of those who identify with the party describe their identification with it as “strong,” while 7.8% described their identification as “very strong.” Additionally, a third of respondents described weak (23.2%) or very weak (6.8%) identification with the party and the remainder considered their identification neither strong nor weak (28.7%).
