There is a lot of speculation taking place with respect to the likely voting behaviour of the population for the upcoming May 11 General Election. Many are forced to speculate because we do not have regular independent surveys of voting behaviour. It is disappointing that no one from Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Guyana conducts regular surveys of the population’s social, economic and political sentiments. Academics have a duty to society and should not have to wait until a patron-client opportunity opens up from IDB or one of the other foreign agencies before research gets done.
For starters the government refuses to release the ethnic breakdown of the population, so anyone doing the surveys will have some degree of uncertainty regarding the sample stratification. Nevertheless, last year – 2014 – the Americas-Barometer surveys were conducted as part of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). The survey sampled 1558