H.H.B. & Associates managing director Louis Bertrand said yesterday he felt vindicated after the poll commissioned by Guardian Media Limited (GML) which he conducted was the only one which correctly called Monday’s general election result, 23-18 in favour of the People’s National Movement.
He said he came under a fair amount of pressure after the poll was published in the T&T Guardian and aired on CNC3 but was glad his work had stood the test.
“In true Trini fashion, some people said I was PNM. I am not PNM. I am not a member of the PNM,” Bertrand said.
His three polls for the T&T Guardian showed Prime Minister-elect Dr Keith Rowley’s favourability ratings steadily increasing in the build up to the September 7 polls.
His last poll on the weekend centered on five marginals — Toco/Sangre Grande, St Joseph, Tunapuna, San Fernando West and Lopinot/Bon Air West — and showed constituents favouring the PNM.
But he said no one believed its validity until the findings proved true when the PNM captured all the seats he called.
The PNM also took Moruga/Tableland from the UNC, which Bertrand did not call. However, Bertrand said he did not poll Moruga/Tableland because of funding constraints. His last poll predicted a 22/19 win for the PNM, without Moruga/Tableland.
Bertrand said polls commissioned by political scientist Dr Hamid Ghany and Dr Vishnu Bisram of NACTA got it wrong when they predicted the PP would win the election.
Solution by Simulation’s Nigel Henry, meanwhile, predicted 18/18, saying five of the seats were too close to call. Bertrand dismissed that, however, saying if a poll cannot predict marginal seats it is not a poll. He said it did not make sense to predict which safe seats a party would win.
As to how he managed to get it right, he said: “It really has to do with doing proper random sampling and having a very good set of interviewers. I have very good interviewers.”
Bertrand said during the campaign a newspaper article tried to make it look as though his company was old and outdated but noted he had been doing polls for a long time and calling them right.
“People would not know this because I have been doing them for political parties and they don’t usually publish their polls,” he said, adding his company has been around a long time and he has been actively polling since the 1970s.
Asked what factors may have contributed to the PP’s loss, Bertrand said the party “made some clear mistakes” in its election campaign. One of them was a massive overkill in its advertising campaign.
“If you keep repeating an ad endlessly it will eventually irritate you, no matter how good it is,” he added.
Another mistake was exclusive focus on former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar at the expense of her other candidates.
The PP’s No Rowley campaign did not work either, he said. Bertrand’s poll found only ten per cent of the people interviewed were affected by it.
However, there was an element of the election results political analysts should find fascinating, he said. While his polls measured 20 per cent going back to the PNM, the results showed something more was at play.
“One surprise may be that there were undecided voters in the marginals who were former UNC/PP supporters who shifted to the PNM,” he said.