A year ago SPEAR, the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research released a poll which showed, among other things, that Prime Minister Said Musa's approval rating was a dismal 19.8%. And while it was big news for us at 7NEWS, the poll was largely snubbed by the media, dismissed by PUP loyalists, and doubted on by a public not politically cultured to polls. But the March 5th municipal elections vindicated the accuracy of the poll. And now to coincide with the anniversary of the first poll, SPEAR today released the findings of a second public opinion poll which asks many of the same questions. What were the answers one year later? It was conducted between the 20th to the 23rd of this month and the findings spin a most interesting political yarn - Alfonso Noble has more.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
SPEAR's anniversary public opinion poll asks respondents five questions.
- Do you approve of the job your Mayor is doing?
- Do you approve of the way the Prime Minister is doing his job?
- Should the Prime Minister call general elections within the next six months?
- If general elections were called within the next six months, would you vote for PUP,
- P or a third party
- And should political parties be required to disclose their sources of campaign
- nance?
Gus Pererra, SPEAR
"The approval rating for the municipalities, the Mayors by district, in terms of Corozal, 54% approved of the way the Mayor was managing the municipality; Orange Walk 36%; Belize City 46%; San Pedro 58%; Belmopan 57%; the twin towns 59%; Dangriga which had the highest rating was 64% and Punta Gorda was 35%.
In terms of the approval rating for the way the Prime Minister was leading
the country, the overall national result was 15.1% approve and 70.5% disapprove with 14% of the population saying that they did not have an opinion on the question. In terms of election being called within six months, 63% felt that the election should be called within six months; 24% disagreed and 13% did not have an opinion.
In terms of what people will lean towards to, their vote, if the election were called within six months, we had 32% leaning towards voting for a UDP government, 22% leaning towards voting for a third party; 11.8% PUP; 17.1% undecided; 11% said that they really were not interested in voting and pretty much didn't feel like they wanted to support any of the parties; and 5% kind of withheld their vote.
The question as to whether there should be a law that requires all parties to disclose their sources of campaign Finance, overwhelming, 81% said that they wanted that law to be put in place."
Gus Pererra is the Executive Director of SPEAR which conducted the poll. He says that the poll is designed to be extremely accurate.
Gus Pererra,
"Scientifically it was done at a 95% confidence level, meaning the margin of error was plus or minus five percent. So on a
scientific basis, that would be the explanation. If you are asking me in terms of whether it is truly reflective of the national sentiment, I think yes. I think that presently the majority of the Belizean people feel a very high sense of dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in the country. I also think that there is a very high level of disaffection among the Belizean people with regards to the status quo of political parties, that things seem to remain the same as they say; the more it changes the more it remains the same. And I think a lot more people are signaling that they want to see something different, something new."
That can be gathered from the responses to the question of whether people would vote for the PUP, the UDP or a third party. Interestingly 22.9% nationally would vote for a third party. In Orange Walk, it's dead even for the PUP and the UDP at 23% each, and trailing closely behind is a prospective third party which 21.7% of respondents said would get their vote. In Toledo frustration with the major mass parties is even higher: the poll shows that overwhelmingly, 35.5% of the population would vote for a third party, much more than would vote for either PUP or UDP. Pererra says this is significant data for analysis.
Gus Pererra,
"We picked up from quite a bit of people that what they want to see now are solutions to the problems that the country are facing. They are not really very interested anymore in hearing about the campaign rhetoric what comes around every time there is a general election. So I think people right now recognize that we have serious problems as a country and they want some serious solutions."
Solutions that this poll shows a fair number of a sampling of voters would be willing to search for outside the present political establishment.
The poll was conducted by phone and fielded opinions from 400 respondents. The full findings of the poll and accompanying charts can be found here: SPEAR Poll Results.
