Opinion poll on upcoming elections, political matters underway

The Turkeyn Research and Polling Institute (TRPI) on Friday rolled out an opinion poll to collect the views of Guyanese on a number of issues including current political matters such as the conduct of General and Regional Elections in Guyana.
Opinion polls provide a database for research purposes as well as inform political parties of the views of voters. Questions in this survey will focus on popular support for the various political figures and parties as well as on people’s views on a host of contemporary issues impacting the nation.

The TRPI poll is being supervised by Trinidadian political analyst, Dr Kirk Meighoo, and will be conducted over the coming days throughout Guyana.
“The Guyana poll examines which political figure has the best shot at unseating the incumbent and which forces have a better prospect at Government format. It also looks at whether the country should have a coalition Government,” Dr Meighoo explained at a press conference on Friday.
TRPI will be conducting this exercise via continuous polling with the first tier starting on Friday and concluding on Monday, when the preliminary findings will be revealed to the public.
According to Dr Meighoo, the poll will be conducted in-person with surveyors placed in all 10 regions to take the opinions of about 300 to 400 participants. He noted that there will be a purposeful sampling as opposed to a random sampling, which can miss the opinions of certain important groups.
“It will be a structure based on the demographic characteristics of the population, and that includes regions of residents and also ethnicity. So we would want to make sure that our sample reflects the official demographic data… Sometimes when you do it purely randomly, there is somewhat of a skewer especially when certain demographics are concentrated in certain areas, you can skip important groups… So we will have a purposefully sampling element to make sure it reflects the national population,” Dr Meighoo told reporters.
Recognising that there is political crisis stemming from the December passage of the No-Confidence Motion, the political analyst posited that no such exercise has been undertaken to record the views of the populace on these events.
“It’s important in a democracy that the people’s views are taken into account. So this is to ensure that popular opinion can be taken into account by decision-makers so they have some gage to know whether what they’re doing finds national support. Because maybe they’ve been talking to their political supporters… but we don’t yet really know what the country as a whole thinks and this the only way we can find out. So it’s really for better democratic governance,” Dr Meighoo said.
The political analyst further noted that he will be meeting with leaders from both the Government and Opposition to present them with the findings from the survey.
While Dr Meighoo has been retained to supervise the political aspect, the continuous polling process will also look into social issues such as crime and security, among others.
The TRPI was founded by Professor Dr Baytoram Ramharack in 1990 and conducted its first opinion poll the following year.
The overseas-funded organisation, which is non-political and non-partisan, had been dormant for some time now before undertaking this polling exercise.