KRALENDIJK – Readers of ABC Online Media, which includes news sites Bonaire.nu, Awor.nu and BES-reporter.com expect that leader of the Democratic Party Bonaire (PDB) will be the big winner of the elections on March 15, 2023. 

This is evident from an online poll held by ABC Online Media together with consultancy firm Linkels & Partners. In total, the poll was completed by exactly 535 readers. Almost 19% of them say they intend to vote for Abraham.

The number one of the Movementu di Pueblo Boneriano (MPB), Hennyson Thielman, would – according to the readers- be sure of a second place when it comes to the number of votes obtained. More than 12% of the respondents indicate that they intend to vote for Thielman.

In third place, when it comes to popularity among readers, is Delno Tromp. He is also from the PDB. More than 8% of the readers indicated that they would vote for Tromp. According to readers, leader of the MPB, Elvis Tjin Asjoe, has to make do with more than 5% of the votes and thus comes in 4th place. Humphrey Wout Jr. (also MPB, ed.) is doing surprisingly well with a fifth place when it comes to the number of personal votes. More than 4% would intend to vote for Wout.

The party leaders of the UPB, James Kroon, and M21, Daisy Coffie, score relatively low among the readers of ABC Online Media. Only 1.6% of the respondents indicate that they intend to vote for James Kroon, while Coffie should even do so with 1.4% of the votes.

Candidates such as Taty Frans (PDB) and Gianni van den Heuvel (also PDB) with a projected 1.8% of the vote would do better than the list leaders of UPB and M21.

Careful

According to psychologist Harald Linkels, the figures should be interpreted with caution. “In previous online polls, we have seen deliberate attempts by groups of respondents to manipulate the results of our polls.” According to Linkels, this time around it also seems that supporters of certain parties have massively filled out the poll. “Especially from the second day that the poll was online, we suddenly saw an enormous increase in the number of votes for certain parties and individual politicians”. Still, according to Linkels, the trend has been clear from the start. “From the very first moment, most readers indicated that they would vote for the opposition in the upcoming elections and especially for Clark Abraham as leader of the PDB.”

Face to face

In recent days, Linkels & Partners has also conducted face-to-face surveys at various locations on the island. Over the next few days, the results of the face-to-face surveys, conducted by four pollsters, will be compared with the results of the online poll and the responses and trends of both collection methods will be analysed in more detail.