A UNC TSUNAMI?

I have never claimed to be an oracle neither do I claim to have psychic or supernatural powers, but I do pay attention to little things  ... straws in the wind, you might say ... and often question the motives of people who try to convince me that certain things are not what they seem to be. What am I on about? The %^&*#@( newspapers ... again!!

You see, I don't mind if any of the newspapers are biased. I have said it before ... they have every right to have a bias or a preference, but at the very least they ought to tell us that they have a bias. Yesterday (Sunday) all the newspapers led with articles that said that PNM was winning. Well, that was their right, I suppose, but was it necessarily true? If we were to take the Express story, for example, their headline "PNM WINS" hid a rather inconvenient truth buried deep within the article. The pollster was saying words to the effect that his poll was a national poll and did not reflect what was happening on a constituency-by-constituency basis. In other words, while their poll might have reflected an overall majority vote nationally for the PNM it did not necessarily reflect what was happening in the individual seats.

Now, everybody knows that there are 41 seats in the country with 39 in Trinidad and 2 in Tobago. To win an election one party has to get at least 21 of those seats. So? The real question is who is going to win what seat? Put another way, how many seats will PNM get and how many will UNC get? At the moment, PNM has 23 seats and UNC has 18.

So? What is the prediction for August 10th? How many will each party get?

As I see it right now today the UNC is vulnerable in 3 seats. They are

Baratari/San Juan

Chaguanas East

Pointe-a-Pierre

I see the PNM vulnerable in 8 seats. They are

Moruga/Tableland

La Horquetta/Talparo

Toco/Sangre Grande

St. Joseph

Tunapuna 

San Fernando West

Tobago East 

Tobago West

Of the 3 vulnerable UNC seats I believe that Chaguanas East and Pointe-a-Pierre will "hold". Barataria/San Juan is really too close to call, but for the sake of argument only let's give that seat to the PNM. So UNC is 1 down, which leaves them with 17.

Of the 8 vulnerable PNM seats I believe that their only hope in Trinidad of "holding" might be San Fernando West, so let's give them that seat. Of the 2 Tobago seats I believe that both are lost to Watson Duke's party, but let's (for the sake of argument again) give the PNM Tobago West.  So that puts UNC 5 "up" and PNM 6 down. 

In other words, if I am right then UNC goes home with 22 seats, PNM gets 18 seats and Mr. Duke walks away with 1 seat.  Kamla is the next Prime Minister.

Now, why am I going on about the newspapers ... again? Because this is the kind of analysis and reporting that we should be getting from them.  But we're not! They are trying to pretend that things are  going one way when all the evidence suggests something else. That there are certain "safe" seats for both sides is a given. But, oh crikey! Tell us what is happening in the marginals. Because that is where the real battle will be.

Incidentally, there are unconfirmed reports that the ground is shifting in certain PNM seats long considered to be "safe". If that is true (and it is a big "if") we could very well see a UNC tsunami.  Either way, we aren't going to have to wait for too long now.