Checking the statistician’s stats

By *Jomo Sanga Thomas

(“Plain Talk” Aug. 15, 2025)

On Aug. 7, One News SVG, an online media outlet, published a mind teaser titled “Statistician predicts uncertainty for both parties in the upcoming 2025 elections”. These are the kind of writing and thinking Vincentians should feast on. The statistician’s analysis should be applauded and encouraged rather than scorned and dismissed. 

Sadly, because of the hyper-partisan divide currently prevailing in SVG, such commendable efforts at analysis are destined to be savaged or dismissed by one side or the other. 

Moreover, because the statistician predicts another narrow victory for the ULP, anticipate annoyance and disapproval, discontent and scepticism, curse words, and worse from opposition ranks.

Although the statistician’s prediction is not outside of the realm of possibility, citizens, the majority of whom voted for the NDP in 2020, need to embrace Dr. Walter Rodney’s maxim that when faced with adversity, the appropriate response is to double down and organise rather than mourn.

Firstly, the statisticians’ prediction of uncertainty and the narrowness of the projected ULP victory in the seats the party holds ought to cause sleepless nights in the governing camp as the election date draws near. ULP is projected to lose the North Leeward seat and hold on to seven seats with a margin that ranges from 15 to 150 votes. Not much to celebrate there unless power is your sole desire.

These projections amount to a case of if you slip, you slide. The slender margins by which the ULP is projected to prevail ought to invigorate those who can’t wait to rid the corridors of power of Gonsalves and the ULP. The statistician’s analysis means that the New Democratic Party will again secure the popular vote, and ULP’s downward spiral will continue.

The statistician’s analysis of the raw numbers since 1994 is valuable and necessary, but insufficient to paint a complete picture as to what we should expect on election night. In my reading, there is an over-reliance and over-emphasis on what the government has invested following the COVID plandemic, the volcanic eruption of April 2022 and the destruction caused by Hurricane Beryl.

Example: If the statistician’s musings on the aid the government has offered to voters are correct, then the ULP should fancy its chances in the Southern Grenadines. However, few people hold out much hope for a ULP victory in the southernmost constituency of our archipelagic country. However, although the government’s handouts may not be enough to reverse the slide in total votes, these give-aways may just be enough to allow the party to secure some, but not all, the seats that the statistician places in its column.

Additionally, the statistician’s finding that candidates who win a seat by less than 110 votes have lost the next time they go to the polls should be heartening to the New Democratic Party. However, the opposition must be alive to the Gonsalves factor in North Windward. He does not have to stay at home and is, therefore, allowed to roam. Further, beware the diabolical efforts to unfairly and illegally offload scores of voters from North Central Windward to North Windward and South Central Windward to make up for the disappearance of what Gonsalves once called a “cordon sanitaire” along the eastern corridor of the country. 

Based on this fact, the North Windward constituency may prove the most difficult for the NDP to crack. But, if the North Windward is called early for the NDP, the ULP would be routed. 

Another tantalising opening for the opposition is South Windward. In 2015, ULP won the seat by 755 votes, but by a mere 219 in 2020. Will Rodan John stop the drift to the NDP? It’s doubtful but possible. Andrew John represents a significant challenge.

Therefore, while a ULP victory is possible, it is highly improbable. The party will lose the next election for the following reasons:

1. COVID Vaccine Mandate: ULP’s ticking time bomb will cause a massive explosion on polling day. An untold number of persons are eagerly waiting to offer their verdict on the ULP’s unnecessary, reckless and wicked vaccine policy that caused incalculable pain and suffering across the land. Hundreds lost their jobs and livelihoods. Lives were snuffed out. Other persons were maimed, injured and continue to suffer. The party cannot live down that evil.
2. Beautification of NDP electoral slate: In the electoral beauty contest, the recruitment of Dr. Kishore Shallow, Conroy Huggins, Shaka Cupid, Phillip Jackson and Andrew John has made the NDP slate far more attractive.
3. ULP’s campaign of nostalgia is stale and destined to fail. With unemployment, underemployment, poverty, official arrogance, waste of the public purse, excessive borrowing, lack of accountability and transparency and official corruption, fewer and fewer people will vote for the party because it built the Rabacca bridge, the Argyle airport, or made heavy investment in education.
4. Citizens are worse off today than they were in 2020. Gonsalves, notorious for mendacity, doesn’t dare tell voters that their lives are better off today as opposed to yesterday, last year or 2020 when citizens last went to the polls. The inability to persuade citizens that their lives have improved makes a 6th term for ULP a very hard sell.
5. Swing: There was a 5% swing away from the ULP in 2020.  I boldly predict a further swing of between 4 and 7% at the next election. As the ULP goes for a 6th consecutive term, buyers’ remorse is now entrenched. As we saw in the statistician’s analysis, the ULP got just a few new voters in the 2020 election compared to the 2015 poll. It’s doubtful that newer, younger voters, all of whom came of age and lived through the ramshackle state of our country, will gravitate to the governing party.
6. Money factor: ULP’s only possible saving grace is money. Gonsalves’ family business is so poor that its only asset is money. The party has no developmental narrative except for mortgaging our future to their foreign friends. The hullabaloo about the new Kingstown port has all but disappeared as the leakage of the sand poses a nightmarish dilemma for the governing elite.

Rhetoric aside, ULP has only one impregnable seat. It can only limp home to another term. NDP is about to romp to victory. 

*Jomo Sanga Thomas is a lawyer, journalist, social commentator and a former Speaker of the House of Assembly in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

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