In last week’s political report, CADRES alluded to the analysis of party support for the leadership which was derived from the leadership preference question. This analysis has generated considerable interest and also some amount of confusion.
Notwithstanding, CADRES will again attempt to explain the concept, as well as to present the analysis as it speaks to an “alternate leader” which was not presented in the last report.
This type of analysis is scientifically referred to as a “cross-tabulation” which isolates respondents who share a particular characteristic (like age, sex or party support) and then analyses this characteristic against their response to another question or series of questions.This analysis is intended to reveal the extent to which any characteristic impacts (positively or negatively) on another view or opinion.
Simply put, we are in this instance trying to see if sex (male or female) or party support (BLP, DLP or Uncertain) impacts on the choice of alternate leader.
Since “impact” is always relative, it is important to appreciate the way in which social researchers determine whether an impact is “significant”, and in this regard CADRES uses the chi square test which we believe is most appropriate for this type of analysis.
We tested the alternative leader question against several demographic characteristics and discovered that there was NO statically significant correlation regarding any demographic characteristic used in the survey.
This means that men and women and persons in all age groups were equally supportive of the different leadership options in both political parties.
There was however a statistically significant impact associated with party support and this is presented in these two charts entitled Alternative DLP Leader and Alternative BLP Leader.
Regarding the DLP’s alternative leader, it can be seen that Sinckler attracted the majority of committed DLP and BLP supporters, while Stuart was more popular among the “Uncertain Voters”. In the previous report, CADRES noted that these “Uncertain Voters” tend to be older, better educated and more middle-income Barbadians.
Since all of the other options accumulated smaller quantities of support, the analysis becomes less interesting there. However it is noteworthy that the few PEP supporters identified in the poll supported Estwick and Jones in equal quantities.
The BLP options were considerably narrower since Barbadians confined their choice of alternative BLP leaders to smaller group of people. It can be seen here that Arthur has taken the vast majority of BLP support, while Mascoll is number two among the Bees and Marshall number three.
DLP supporters also preferred Arthur, but half of them were more inclined towards Marshall. Interestingly the “Uncertain Voters” went first for Arthur, but thereafter preferred Mascoll which is perhaps suggestive of a Barbadian preference for Mascoll over Marshall to some extent, although we acknowledge that the differences between the two gentlemen are statistically insignificant in this instance.
