WILLEMSTAD - A recent opinion poll conducted by consultancy firm Linkels & Partners, among readers of news sites, suggests that if elections were to be held now, the PAR and MAN parties would be (by far) the largest.
In the survey, which was completed last week by 1128 respondents, 28.5% indicated that they would vote for the PAR, if there were elections, followed by 21.7% who would vote for the MAN.
The PIN would become the third largest party, albeit remotely, with 6.4% of the votes. The coalition parties are not doing badly with this. The government coalition thus collectively obtains about 56.6% of the votes.
However, a considerable caveat is a fact that as many as 28.5% of the voters indicate that they do not want to vote for any of the existing parties. This means that there is still a large group of "floating" voters who would either not want to vote or would vote for a possible new party.
Caution
Psychologist Harald Linkels, director of Linkels & Partners, says that the interpretation of the results should be treated with caution: “We have primarily sought out readers of the news site curacao.nu, although we know that the link to the survey has been shared and forwarded to others by people, for example via Whatsapp and Facebook ”.
It cannot be stated with certainty that the results of the survey are representative of what is going on in the total population. Linkels points out that the number of respondents is (very) large and therefore the necessary value can certainly be attached to the results, which he believes provide important indications.
“This government does its best but shows a lot of weakness and little decisiveness, I would like to vote differently but see no good alternatives” -Participant in the survey
Linkels says his agency has chosen to conduct surveys primarily over the Internet because it has important benefits. “In this way we can quickly gauge the opinion of people on the island on a multitude of topics that are very topical and - literally - are currently playing.
Although the results may not be (fully) representative as a result, it is easy to gauge how citizens on the island think about certain matters. In addition, the research can be carried out at relatively low costs.
Because a relatively large number of questions are also asked about the respondents, it is possible to conduct further analyzes, for example, whether preferences are also influenced by factors such as age, income group or other characteristics.
Positive
According to Linkels, the responses to the initiative to conduct surveys are generally very positive. “585 people took the trouble to provide feedback on the survey that assessed who they favored as the Minister of Economic Affairs. About 70% of the reactions were (very) positive, about 25% neutral and about 5% negative”.
Most respondents say they like being asked for their opinion and hope that, for example, those in authority, also listen to that feedback.
“A few have accused us of doing cheap politics in the past week, but that is our last intention. We want to measure opinions and find out how things are in the community, although we can imagine that certain topics or questions can be sensitive," said Linkels.
A very good initiative! I hope that the government also reads the results. - Participant in the survey