The end of the campaign trail

Tomorrow is D-Day. The die is cast, as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar described his point of no return, on who will win the 2025 general election and lead us into the difficult years that await us.

A lot has been said about the importance of the floating voter and who will support the new parties tomorrow, but by now most people’s minds have been made up. It has not been easy to decipher fact from fiction but the once-undecided are probably the voters who have listened closely to what the various new contenders for their vote have argued and decided which policies resonated most or promises seemed most realisable or dishonest.

They are the ones who perhaps feel that returning the PNM, which has had a fair time in power, is too deja-vu, or just the opposite. They might have come instead to think that the PNM is the only party with the necessary experience for the job at this juncture, judging from what the opposing candidates have laid out while out on the hustings.

After all the campaigning, the UNC might not have convinced them, or vice-versa. The party is presenting a slate of many new faces in the world of politics. The once-undecided might think the time is not right for that, or they might prefer that the UNC leader is an old hand and believe she is able to take on the leadership of TT yet again, notwithstanding the comparative lack of experience in the party’s top ranks.

The point is that these floaters are very important in tomorrow’s election in the marginals and elsewhere, and the politicians have recognised it. With the increased number of new and possibly non-party-pri voters being apparently higher than normal and the rise of credible new parties – although still in their infancy and, strictly speaking, as yet unviable in government, especially in a tenuous coalition – we could be looking at a radically different political scenario emerging. There is an air of irascibility apparent in the schisms in the PNM and UNC, although papered over in both, which will probably vent itself when one of them fails to secure a majority.

The politicians are deeply aware that the stakes are high. The play for the vote of the party-faithfuls and the undecided has been hard work, as a result. I found myself feeling real admiration for all the candidates who over the last few weeks have been on the exhausting campaign trail, and for the party members who hosted and promoted the umpteen meetings and walkabouts.

I am not convinced that politicians enter the ring just to get rich and steal from the public purse, although some do intend to access power for their own narrow interest. I believe that a sense of wanting to make things better is a motivating force for the majority.

Undoubtedly, once in the system they discover limits to what they can achieve, eg, their own emotional or intellectual unpreparedness, having to toe the party line, the entrenchment of the unreformed public service and mindset of many public servants, or even corruption in the ranks.

It must be a compromise that they have to arrive at, which is not unlike in any other institution, but it is lamentable that politicians seem to have lost public trust. And yet, they may not have done so completely. The intense campaigning that draws large crowds and followers on social media tells us that there is still hope among both voters and potential political representatives.

If we believed that people always stick to one particular party through blind loyalty then campaigning itself would be entirely worthless, but a lot of research has been done on campaigning and there is significant evidence that the electorate can be persuaded by new information, although voters do not necessarily abandon prior beliefs while taking in new or different information.

It suggests, therefore, that some of the campaigning we have seen from our party hopefuls has been counterproductive since a merely partisan approach is not going to win a party new support. Thinking people want the beef, and there are still enough of them to matter. Antagonism and mud-slinging are much less productive with floaters than politicians might think. Only the die-hards are positively impacted by that us-and-them strategy.

On the other hand, fear has been used in an attempt to weaken opponents' chances among voters who are acutely aware of the treacherous economic, social and external environment. It may have had some effect, how much, we will soon know.

The political hopefuls have done their bit and now we voters must do ours by going out to the polling stations to say how we want to be governed. Each person’s vote is a powerful thing, otherwise the politicians would not be so desperate to get it. Why waste it?