Dear Editor,
A tracking opinion survey on Guyana’s general elections conducted by NACTA in mid-August showed the PPP Presidential candidate Donald Ramotar is more preferred over David Granger of APNU, Khemraj Ramjattan of AFC, C.N Sharma of JFAP, and other candidates for the Presidency. The survey also shows the incumbent PPP way ahead of its challengers in popular support.
NACTA, founded in New York by Caribbean educators, has no affiliation with any political party. It has been conducting polls regularly in Guyana, the Caribbean and other regions over the last 20 years. The latest Guyana poll was conducted to determine peoples’ preference for the Presidency, approval ratings for the President, and popular support for the political parties.
The poll randomly interviewed 420 voters to yield a demographically representative sample (45% Indians, 30% Africans, 16% Mixed, 8% Amerindians, and 1% other races) of the population. The survey was conducted by interviewers with many years of experience in survey interviewing and was coordinated by Vishnu Bisram, a pollster, newspaper columnist, and an educator in NY. The results of the poll were analyzed at a 95 per cent significance level and a statistical sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points was found. Sampling results based on subgroups (such as Indians or Africans) have a larger sampling error of about 6%.
Asked who they prefer as President of Guyana among the available choices representing the varied parties, 46% opted for Ramotar, 23% chose Granger, 8% Ramjattan, 1% Sharma and less than 1% all other candidates, with 21% not making a choice.
In terms of popular support, the PPP is polling 47%, followed by APNU 24%, AFC 7%, JFAP 1% , other parties less than 1% , and 20% undecided or no response. With the election still months away opinions could change by then.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
