This last week has been a nail-biting rollercoaster ride for the two front runners for the Democratic nomination- Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary weeps and her polls surge- Barack courted the Black vote in South Carolina and his ratings zoomed. The polls giveth and the polls taketh away.

From observing the ebb and flow of poll charming at the distance of 2000 miles the cynical side of my personality wonders if the tail is wagging the dog- have the polls become more important than the candidates and the issues.

To borrow a phrase from BELIZE TIMES columnist Press, let’s go on a trip down memory lane to look at the roots of opinion polls. The first record of an opinion poll was a local straw vote processed by The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian in 1824. In the contest for US President the poll showed Andrew Jackson ahead of John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169. Guess who won the election? In a convoluted four way tie- Adams ended President in 1824. Not a very auspicious debut for pollsters.

Another famous boneheaded presidential poll took place in1936, when the esteemed Literary Digest cited that Alf Landon was gonna lick shot over Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Digest polled 2.3 million "voters". Though their sample was flawed and biased towards wealthy voters with an anti-New Deal mindset. Gallup conducted a far smaller, more scientifically-based survey with a demographically accurate base. Gallup predicted Roosevelt's massive win. The faulty methodology of the Literary Digest doomed them- the company went belly-up shortly after Roosevelt’s election victory. Conversely George Gallup’s company took off at a gallop, still active today in the polling biz.

In Belize election polls are still in their fledgling stage. This last week, in the space of just five days two polls were presented with somewhat varied conclusions. The SPEAR poll that was presented Thursday turned out to be ambiguous and inconclusive. A whopping 52% of those 400 persons polled didn’t cite a political preference. The SPEAR people did a little statistical mumbo-jumbo and though their indecipherable calculations deemed the red party winner. How can anyone accurately predict anything when 52% remain mum? Also the SPEAR poll conducted its survey exclusively via land-line telephones- no cell-phones even though there are five times more cells than landlines.                                      

SPEAR’s faulty demographics and myopic methodology come off uncannily close to the cockeyed findings of the pollsters in the 1948 presidential contest between FDR and Dewey. In that contest the polls were conducted by telephone- which in that day and age were more in the province of the wealthy and few and far between in Truman’s grass roots, populist base. The biased phone base showed more support for Dewey than was actually there. Likewise the biased phone base in the SPEAR poll skewered the results.

The second pre-election poll was spearheaded by two leading academics- Dr. Joe Iyo and Dr. Marion Cayetano. Their survey covered 1,100 voters and was done face to face- no telephonies. Cayetano-Iyo used a cutting edge methodology known as “non-probability sampling technique” Their technique didn’t have anywhere near 52% undecided responses. The Cayetano-Iyo poll results indicated a close race- with the PUP squeaking by with 48.92% of the votes.

Obviously each party favors one poll over the other. If the hat fits, wear it.

Stateside, the somewhat contradictory results between the two polls would cause much consternation and finger-pointing. In Belize the tail doesn’t wag the dog as yet. The vaulted poll theory is not considered gospel. Belizeans tend to vote their minds- not the pollsters predictions. 

The race is heating up and the candidates are running at break-neck speed. The finish-line is a mere nine days away. This biased reviewer’s casual straw poll from a decidedly grass roots perspective is that the PUP will form the next government. I’ll cover that prediction with cheddar for those sporting types out there in reader-land.