SVG’s voting population — a quick look at how it’s evolving

By S.L.

What we do not have while doing this are actual age groups or causes of death. They are somewhat irrelevant to this discussion.

Close to 2,200 persons of voting age have presumably died since the last election. That’s in a span of two years, and averages about 90 per month. This could very well be normal, but one thing that cannot be denied is the increasing length of the daily death announcements on radio. The politicians may have gone to that many funerals, cumulatively, and didn’t quite notice. In fairness, it is only about 2.2% of the voting population at last election’s cutoff. We must also state here though that almost 4% have been added to the voting population in that same time. The net result is a growth of 1.8% in the voting population. In any case, a close look at the number of departed may prove to be interesting.

Of the departed, males make up 57%. One may argue that this is proportionate to the sex demographics of the voting population, and that may make sense. However, if we were to look at that closer, except for a handful of constituencies (East St. George, East Kingstown, Marriaqua), males only outnumber females 51% to 49%, of the voting population.

In fact, while it has been so in East St. George for a long time — females outnumber males — both East Kingstown and Marriaqua are recent additions; meaning that it is only recent that females make up a larger portion of the voting population in these three, though slim; but that margin appears to be widening as evidenced in East Kingstown.

From a general constituency view, only four (Central Kingstown, Marriaqua, Southern and Northern Grenadines) are in direct proportionate position with where they rank in voting population, if we are to take the numbers for what they are. Central Kingstown, for example, currently has the fourth largest voting population, and it has the fourth highest number of voting age persons who have presumably died since the last election.

On the other hand, West St. George is the third largest, but it leads the list in total among all constituencies with people of voting age who have presumably died since the last election. Arnos Vale area is followed by Belair, of which 72% male versus 28% female. South Central Windward is another one. It is 11^th on the list as far as voting population size, but it’s fifth among those who have died. South Windward is 10^th and sixth, in the same respect. Others like North Windward, East St. George, and the leeward seats are in an indirect proportionate position, meaning they rank lower in terms of those deaths, but higher in voting population.

There are also areas where there have been more females departing than males, though the gap is quite slim. Calder, Park Hill, Keartons, Ashton, Sion Hill are examples of areas where that has happened. It may also be interesting to note here that currently, females account for a larger part of the voting population in Sion Hill. They outnumber males in new additions as well. Stubbs and Green Hill are also two of the forty-one areas where this is happening for new additions.
Lowsman Hill and Sharpes lead the list of areas where more males have departed. Not to be confused, while West Kingstown as a constituency is ninth on the list of the total departed, Lowmans Hill leads the list of areas in total and in the male count. Barrouallie is second to Lowmans Hill, in total.
There’s essentially no limit for how we can slice and dice this discussion. A lot of what we see happening around us – the decisions that are being made the world over, are mostly driven by analytics. We can deploy the same tactics in strategy development and deployment. Sometimes we find interesting things when we study the numbers, taken for what they are worth.

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