2012 Election Results: The Story behind the numbers.

By now everyone is aware that the PNP won the 2012 General Elections 8 seats to the PDM 7 seats. PNP won 6 seats at the Electoral District level and 2 at the All Island level compared to the PDM 4 seats at the Electoral District level and 3 at the All Island level.

Although the PNP won the Government, it only obtained 44.9% of the votes cast at the Electoral District level – i.e. the Popular Vote – which was 331 votes less than the PDM, which got 50.1% of the Popular Vote. For reference, the PPP got 4.9% of the Popular Vote the sole Independent candidate got 0.1%. Together, this brings the total number of votes cast at the Electoral District level to 6,311 – not including the 41 rejected ballots.

Where the numbers tells a fascinating story is at the All Island level where 30,428 votes were cast for the following 11 candidates (in the order of highest to lowest):

 

Before it the elections it was widely speculated that Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson would get the highest tally based on her popularity and the amount of non-PDM supporters who said that they would give her a vote. And based on the final results she achieved by obtaining 3,427 of the votes cast.

 

However, to truly understand the impact that Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson and the other All Island candidates individually had on the election, we need to see how much cross party appeal each candidate had, and which candidate (if any) helped or hurt his/her party.

 

To get behind the numbers, I created a Popularity Index with the following assumptions: a) If a candidate is highly popular and everyone voted for him/her their vote tally should equal to the total number of persons who voted at Electoral District level, which was 6,311 – not including those voters whose ballots got rejected – which would give the  candidate a 100% Popularity Index rating, and b) To help their party an All Island candidate would need to get a higher percentage in the Popularity Index than their party got in the Popular Vote. The opposite would be true if the candidate got less than his/her party’s Popular Vote. For example, 3,427 voters cast a vote for Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson out of the 6,311 who voted, which would give her a Popularity Index rating of (3,427/6,311) = 54.3%. In other words, 54% of the voting public voted for her. When we look at the numbers this way, the candidates would rank the same as their total vote tally, which is:

 

Now if we take into consideration that 50.1% of all voters identified themselves as PDM by casting a vote for them at Electoral District level and 44.9% did the same for the PNP, we can clearly see who hurt/helped their party and by how many votes. As stated above, to help their party an All Island candidate would need to get a higher percentage in the Popularity Index than his/her party got in the Popular Vote – let us call this difference “Cross-Over Appeal”. For clarity, the All Island candidate would need to get more votes than the total votes cast for his/her party at the Electoral District level. For example, Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson got 54.3% in the Popularity Index rating compared to the 50.1% the PDM got in the Popular Vote, which gives her a positive difference of 4.2% or 263 more votes than her party got at the Electoral District level. In short, Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson got at a minimum of 263 persons who did not vote for the PDM at the Electoral District level to vote for her.

 

If we compare all the All Island candidates by this criteria they rank as follows:

Based on the analysis above, the following arguments can be made in my humble opinion:

 

The country is still very much polarized along political lines. Despite all the talk of sharing votes, very few persons did so, with more PDM’s doing so than PNP’s. Although I was with the PNP team in London when the final details of the new Constitution was “negotiated”, I am still not sure what the British Government objective was when they requested that 5 seats in Parliament be All Island seat. My belief is that they wanted to make it easier for Independent candidates to be able to win a seat in Parliament, however, if this was the case, the voting public clearly showed that it is very much party orientated, voting in many cases “Straight down the line.”     

Among the 10 party affiliated All Island candidates, Dr. Ewing has the most cross-over appeal, which is seen by the fact that he got at a minimum 372 persons who did not vote for the PNP at the Electoral District level to vote for him. This is more than likely due to the fact that he came from what would be viewed as a PDM family, thereby making it easier for persons who voted PDM at the Electoral District level to vote for him at the All Island level. This is clear in the case of Blue Hills and Wheeland – Dr. Ewing’s childhood home – where he got 556 All Island votes compared to the PNP 389 Electoral District votes. Being the Chairman of the Civil Servants Association also helped – although this cannot be verified through this analysis – as it would have also made it easier for those Civil Servants who voted PDM at the Electoral District level to give him a vote.

Mr. Misick clearly still has a lot of respect among the voting public as he gained strong support right across the country. His popularity is shown by the fact that he has the second highest “Cross-over Appeal” with 4.3%, which allowed him to get at a minimum 274 persons who did not vote for the PNP at the Electoral District level to vote for him.

Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson was by far the most popular PDM candidate and the most popular All Island candidate overall. Right across the country the PDM base gave her their full support, and her popularity carried right past the political lines where she was able to get at a minimum 263 persons who did not vote for the PDM at the Electoral District level to vote for her. Mrs. Cartwright-Robinson popularity was helped by the fact that she was the most vocal in the Consultative Forum, and the public generally saw her as “their voice” and “as having the public interest at heart”.

 

The reason why I am including these two together is because their results were material and it affected the outcome of the election. The poor showing of these two candidates reversed the gains that the PDM made in the Popular Vote and gave the PNP the election victory. This can be clearly seen in the fact that at a minimum 268 persons who voted for the PDM at the Electoral District level did not give Mr. Harvey a vote, with 270 persons doing the same to Mr. Skippings. If those PDM’s who withheld their votes from these gentlemen had voted for them, they would have gotten a total of 3,175 and 3,174 votes respectively, which would have given them the 4^th and 5^th spots – as they would have garnered more votes than Washington Misick and Josephine Connolly – among the All Island candidates. This would have given the PDM a total of 4 seats at the All Island level and the government with a total of 8 seats overall.  

 

In addition to all of the above, the way the electoral boundaries were drawn also benefited the PNP, as the PDM large popular support was isolated in pockets, which despite allowing them win big in some areas, made it difficult for them to turn the same into a majority of seats won at the Electoral District level.    

 

E. Jay Saunders