Winning the uncommitted

Political pundits say a key focus of any tight election campaign is winning the uncommitted voters, the ones who ‘sit on the fence’, whose decision could potentially swing victory to one side or the other.

These electors are not part of the base, not part of the core supporters for either side.

According to the pundits, these individuals vote on issues and policies promulgated to address them – not political allegiance or empty promises.

Securing these votes in ‘bellwether’ constituencies, political zones where voting choices usually indicate the wider results for the country, and in marginal constituencies, where the victories for either party in previous elections have been determined by less than 10 per cent of the voter turnout, is crucial.

The latest RJRGLEANER-commissioned Don Anderson poll, conducted between January and February of this year, revealed that 26 per cent of participants were still undecided about voting, while 20 per cent said they definitely would not vote. With 45 per cent of Jamaicans intending to vote in the next general election at the time, a slight increase from the 42 per cent recorded in a September 2024 poll, the nation’s two major political parties will be looking bring the undecided to their side and convince those who say they have no intention to go to the polls that there is good reason give their support.

Thus, campaign teams would be minded to detect, understand, and woo these individuals, particularly younger voters indifferent about the political process, or those older electors, who have navigated multiple changes of government and have grown frustrated with the performances of both parties.

It’s a very dynamic and tedious task, explained decorated pollster Don Anderson last Thursday, as he unpacked the nuances of profiling such a voter.

“If you look at the youth votes, when Holness became prime minister, the youth votes were heavily toward the JLP because the young people gravitated toward a younger leader, tall and handsome and so forth,” Anderson explained. “What we are finding over the last couple of polls is that the youth voters are now kind of vacillating between the JLP and the PNP, though the last time we did the poll, they were more in the JLP camp.

“So you could say that the younger persons, 18-24 years old, are somewhat in the potential swing category. However, they represent the least age cohort that is prepared to vote. So even though they are swinging in between, their numbers probably won’t have a significant impact unless a whole heap of them come out to vote,” he noted, adding that polls also have fingered males over 55 years old as another group that could cause an upset for either party.

Unlike in former years, when the PNP enjoyed dominance in this age group, things are shifting, as older folks die and younger persons are moving up.

“More of them are voting for the JLP now than before, but it is not enough to say more of the 55 age group is voting for the JLP than the PNP; in other words, the gap between is not large enough,” he relayed, explaining that older persons tend to prioritise national issues – access to water and housing, etc; while younger voters are more interested in individual gains and their futures.

The ideas that politics is corrupt, that politicians only look after themselves, and that generally the population doesn’t benefit from the work of politicians, are among the factors that could decide whether these individuals even bother to vote, he shared, emphasising that there is a significant degree of mistrust for politicians.

Soft political allegiance

Even more crucial, he charged, are “swing” constituencies like St Elizabeth South Western, held now by Floyd Green, which has over the years shown almost equal amounts of election victories for either party.

“So when you are looking at an election, even though Green is the incumbent, you wouldn’t want to put that in the JLP camp because they have won almost an equal number of times as the PNP.”

He explained that voters today are much more “mature”, and not easily influenced by election promises. Nonetheless, they hold these promises against election officials when unkept.

A study, dubbed Who is the Undecided?, authored by Professor Lloyd Waller and Dr Stephen Johnson of The University of the West Indies (UWI), claims that even among undecided voters, there is still soft political allegiance, particularly for the PNP.

According to the study, among the 1,065 respondents who identified as undecided voters, 63 per cent indicated that they had no alignment to a political party, 21 per cent expressed some alignment with the PNP, and 16 per cent with the JLP.

Undecided voters, even those with faint allegiance to the political parties, share commonalities such as they are predominantly female, they are among the economically squeezed middle-income earners taking home between $14,000 and $79,000 weekly, and they are often living in rural areas, where service delivery and government presence may be lacking.

There is also “high participation in unskilled labour, which may be associated with low social mobility and limited exposure to political capital. Low university completion rates ... and are of Christian background, which means, values-based outreach (faith, family, fairness) could be effective across both groups”, the study noted.

The dynamics play out differently across constituencies, explained political commentator Germaine Barrett, who also listed rural constituencies in St Elizabeth and St Mary among what he described as bellwether seats, indicators of where the election victory may swing.

Some others are marginal, he relayed, noting the push by both parties to win undecided voters. The JLP’s launch of its Records of Achievement campaign is one example, he said.

“I think the JLP and the PNP have recognised that the rallies and the sessions that they have with riling up the base, ... the base is already excited and ready for the election,” said Barrett. “The voter who is likely to swing favours the party most convincing to them.

“Gone are the days when Jamaica was a PNP or JLP country. It is even right now. The bases are pretty equal. What will determine the election for swing voters is the party that is going to engage them most meaningfully. Whichever that is will enjoy the larger proportion of that vote.

“They (parties) won’t get everybody. There will remain a portion of the voting population that remains uncommitted, but I think the focus going forward needs to be about engaging as broad a number of that population. The conversation ought not to be had with the base group; the base is already loaded and ready to vote. The election is going to be determined based on the party that can excite the greater proportion of the undecided.”

Green or orange?

Dr Christopher Tufton, the chairman of the JLP campaign committee, said his party has been appealing to this particular group.

“The battle for the minds of the swing voters is a nuanced one in terms of how you position the issues, how you assess the key issues of those voters, and then how you address those key issues based on your track record of performance, or certainly, your commitment as part of your election platform, and we are very mindful of that. That’s what we have done in the past, and certainly what we continue to do,” he said.

Dr Dayton Campbell, general secretary of the PNP, told The Gleaner yesterday that, from the data his party has gathered, undecided or swing voters flow across all age groups but might be made up more of the younger cohort whose primary concerns include employment opportunities and housing.

For younger voters, he noted that the PNP has made a specific pitch around education, including capping student loan repayment at a manageable portion of monthly income and not requiring repayment during the period in which the borrower is unemployed, while also not impacting credit scores.

He also noted that the PNP intends to build 50,000 houses in order to increase supply to meet demand while providing $500,000 towards deposits for prospective homeowners.

Noting that older persons might not necessarily have the same concerns as younger individuals, he said the priorities for the former are the services they require.

Asked why swing voters should vote for the PNP, he said, “We think that better can be done and people deserve a better quality of life.”

editorial@gleanerjm.com