January 29, 2008
A poll was conducted over the weekend to establish which political party would most likely win the upcoming general election. The poll spearheaded by University of Belize Professor Dr. Joseph Iyo and Marion Cayetano of Galen University contradicts what was released last week by the SPEAR Poll. This poll suggests that the People's United Party would win the February 7th elections by a margin of about five percent. Dr. Iyo says that they have all confidence in the results of the poll.
Dr. Joseph Iyo,University of Belize Professor:
"A lot of thought was put into designing this poll to help us eliminate some of the potential problems that occur normally with every sample. The results is very exciting because based on the criteria, I was surprised that like Corozal would be totally red and so I don't know what may inform that type of result but in the sense of the deign and what we have done, I am 100% confident of the exercise we have conducted. If anything changes within now and then, will be based on further efforts by the public. Based on what we have done we have high confidence with the poll we have conducted."
The results as presented in a graph showed that 48.92% of the sample group said that they would vote for the People's United Party, while 42.69% voted for the United Democratic Party. The National Belizean Alliance, one of the third parties contesting the election had the least votes at .81 percent.
A total of one thousand, one hundred and eight people were polled. This number was selected based on the voters registration lists dated December 2007. That lists had a total of 149 thousand 930 registered voters. To date that amount is much higher. Doctor Iyo says that the margin of error is about three percent. He told us why.
Dr. Joseph Iyo,University of Belize Professor:
"When you calculate the amount of the sample with the amount of the population, you begin to find the marginal pair and when you factor in the response rate, you can further more determine precisely the amount of confidence they have in their survey. So the sampling process is a process whereby you make an estimate or generalizations about the population based on the information contained in the sample. So we're using the sample essentially predicted of the behavior in Belize."
Contrary to voting patterns the United Democratic Party won in Corozal over the People's United Party and in the Cayo District the People's United Party won over the United Democratic Party. Dr.Iyo and Cayetano says that they will be doing a valuation poll this weekend.