The date for the by-election in St John has finally been announced and by this evening the candidate for the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) should be known. Attention must therefore now turn to the likely outcome of the election and the ways in which this might be analysed.
In any election there is the possibility it can go either way. However, it can reasonably be assumed that the DLP will win and attention should therefore be turned to the ways in which different support levels can be interpreted. To this end CADRES has prepared two relevant charts which are appended herewith.
The first chronicles the DLP’s support in this constituency since 1966 and demonstrates that the party has controlled it effortlessly since Independence in 1966. The local performances are not presented; however, the DLP controls every single polling division in that constituency with its strongest being JC2 (St John’s Church area) and JE2 (Society). Conversely, the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) is strongest in JC4 (Four Cross Roads area).
The chart also notes the fact that the DLP’s worst year in St John was in 1966, with support levels peaking there in 1986 which, coincidentally, was the DLP’s best ever election performance. CADRES generally considers a seat safe once it passes the 65 per cent margin and it is noteworthy that in the case of St John, it was safe even at its “lowest ebb”. In his five post-Independence electoral contests, the late Errol Barrow averaged 79 per cent of the total votes cast, while the late David Thompson averaged 78 per cent. Since this percentage point difference is negligible, it can be determined that Thompson’s record there was equal to that of Barrow’s.
Better than Barrow
This presentation is also interesting since it compares the last Barrow performance with the first Thompson performance (1986/87) and concludes that Thompson did not actually perform better than Barrow on his first political excursion as it has often been argued. Certainly Thompson gained more votes, but his overall vote share was one percentage point lower, which might actually be attributable to the performance of the lone Independent candidate in 1986 who only gained a single vote.
It can also be seen that Barrow’s support grew from its starting point consistent with the fact that he became Prime Minister in 1966, while Thompson’s dropped after he was elected up to the low point of 1999, which was the year that the DLP only secured two seats. Thereafter Thompson’s support grew but he never regained the 1987 magic.
In the 2011 by-election, the DLP’s new candidate will be assessed against his or her ability to secure a support level that is not dissimilar to Thompson’s last electoral excursion in 2008 (84 per cent) and this is related to the electoral swing analysis which is also presented. This compares the DLP national swing to the swing in St John and assumes that readers are familiar with this concept that CADRES relies on heavily.
Since the DLP’s performance in St John (in terms of the share of votes cast) is not comparable with its national performance, we should consider the swing comparison, which is more moderate and evaluates the party’s improvement between elections. This analysis starts in 1976 since the double member constituency arrangement complicates the swing in 1966 and we therefore have to use 1971 as the base year here.
It can therefore be seen that the DLP’s performance in St John has varied since it was in some instances similar to the party’s national performance and in some cases better or worse than the party’s performance at the national level. The general swing pattern in “garrison” constituencies like this reflects an exaggerated improvement when the party rebounds nationally and a similarly exaggerated deterioration when the party’s fortunes decline. St John is consistent with that pattern, hence when the DLP started its recovery from the 1976 defeat,
in 1981 St John’s swing was more than nine times the national average. Similarly, in 2003, St John almost doubled the national swing.
However, in poor DLP years St John has fluctuated, treating Barrow no differently at the local level and treating Thompson much worse in 1999. These fluctuations are likely to be related to personal popularity factors, in addition to the fact that Barrow was Prime Minister during the entire comparative period, while Thompson never contested an election in St John as Prime Minister.
There are several by-election comparisons that one can refer to.
On the BLP side there is the 1981/84 Bertie Hinds/Owen Arthur performance in which Arthur matched the performance of Hinds on the second occasion (52 per cent-52 per cent); the 1981/85 Tom Adams/David Simmons example where Simmons did considerably worse than Adams (67 per cent-55 per cent) and the 1999/2002 David Simmons-Cynthia Forde situation where she did slightly less well than Simmons (76 per cent-68 per cent).
Comparatively, the recent DLP contests are the 1994/96 Lawson Weekes/Clyde Mascoll scenario in which Mascoll improved on the performance of Weekes (47 per cent-55 per cent) and the 86/87 Barrow-Thompson performance where Thompson equalled Barrow’s performance.
Perception of party
Cumulatively these examples present very different pictures and one can argue that while there are personal factors, the performance of the new candidate is often a reflection of the way in which the party is viewed at the national level. It can therefore be argued that the Simmons performance in 1985 was a good indication of what was to come in 1986. However, we would also argue that the Mascoll performance reflects the fact that the conditions which facilitated the 1999 landslide matured after 1996.
At the national level the DLP has been struggling to come to grips with a global recession and while the 2009 CADRES poll reflected an improvement in the perception of the DLP, the 2010 survey implied that it has fallen back to the 2008 performance level. Consistently, a significant fall in DLP support in this by-election would signal a level of national displeasure that carries severe implications for 2013, while a moderate fall or match would imply that the DLP is “holding on” to its support and seats.
A significant improvement in the fortunes of the DLP in St John seems unlikely at this time since the party already controls close to 80 per cent of the national vote there; hence we look towards January 20 with much anticipation.
• Peter W. Wickham is a political consultant and director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES); [email protected]
