Oranjestad, St. Eustatius- The BES-Reporter and Linkels & Partners, back in May 2020, correctly predicted the outcome of the Island Council Elections on St. Eustatius.

While the Poll at the time was criticized from various sides, the overall result was correctly predicted. “One of the key findings of the Poll is that the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) would once again emerge as the biggest party on the island”, the BES-Reporter wrote on May 2nd, 2020 based on the figures generated by the Poll.

The Poll also predicted that former PLP leader Clyde van Putten would emerge as biggest vote-getter in the elections. As the personal vote count will only be published on Friday, it remains to be seen if this prediction was also correct.

Shifts

While the win by the PLP was correctly predicted, the actual results differ quite a bit from what was predicted by the Poll. Of course, at the moment of the Poll, it was unknown as of yet what parties would participate and what candidates would be on the respective lists. Also, many parties had not indicated as of yet, if they would participate at all in an election that would not see the full restoration of Democratic powers on the island.

The most important shifts are that both the PLP and the Democratic Party (DP) did (much) better than was predicted by the Poll. In actuality, the PLP managed to secure 51.4% of the votes, while the DP managed to get 40.8% of the votes. Another conclusion is that the United People’s Coalition (UPC), with 7.8% of the votes, also did much better than was predicted by the Poll.

Turnout

Voter turnout furthermore resulted to be much higher than was predicted by the Poll. Asked if they considered to vote at the time, so in May 2020, 36.6% said they would not vote, while in reality only 23% of eligible voters did not use their right to vote in yesterday’s Election.

Dutch Intervention

Some political observers yesterday shared with the BES-Reporter that they saw the October 21 elections as a ‘referendum’ on how far the population was in agreement with the Dutch intervention from February 2018, in which the governing PLP/Merkman coalition was sent home.

The Poll, executed by Linkels & Partners, at the time asked respondents if they agreed or disagreed with the intervention by The Hague. 56% of respondents indicated they did not agree with said intervention.

While the thought that the feeling on the intervention would be the only determining factor in voting behavior cannot be sustained by ‘hard data’, indications are that the measured disapproval does coincide with the percentage of voters who voted PLP, which was -of course- firmly against the take over by the Dutch Government.

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