by

Vishnuguptha

“Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.”

~Paul Wellstone

No report reaching this writer has revealed of any survey or opinion poll, scientific or otherwise, that has been done so far on the forthcoming Provincial Council elections in the Wayamba, Central and Northern provinces scheduled for September 21 this year. The absence of any forecast or prediction, therefore, is bothering the Colombo pundits and club-dwellers who are more interested in these polls and predictions than the average villager who lives in these provinces.

Yet it is most appropriate that somewhat detailed an analysis of the past performances of the political parties in these three provinces is performed and an attempt made to ascertain whether any realistic forecast could be made prior to the elections, not as a tool to influence the prospective voters in the districts, namely, Puttalam, Kurunegala, Maha Nuwara, Matale, Nuwara Eliya, Jaffna, Mullaitivu, Vavunia, Mannar and Kilinochchi in the respective provinces, but as an endeavor to discover the mindset of the voter and whether any manifest trend is in evidence of the way the voter has been behaving.

I am not making any attempt to offer a forecast or a prediction on the forthcoming Provincial Council election. The elections are scheduled for September 21and there may be many a slip between the cup and lip. However, in the absence of any realistic forecast made by public relations agencies who usually undertake opinion polls prior to elections, it is quite pardonable to make some kind of ‘reading’ of the behavior of the voter. Even polls, however scientific and ‘self-proclaimingly’ accurate they may be, they could also be essentially an ascertainment and reading of the mind of the voter at a given time, reflecting the voter-reaction in a ‘flashpoint’, a frozen time frame.

Yet one cannot disregard the trends that opinion polls tell us about and it is this phenomenon-trend- that we must look for when reading opinion polls. If we could identify certain trends and which way these trends lead us and which factors influence these trends most, a reasonable person could quite legitimately forecast the outcome of an election and could be as close as to the last decimal point in these forecasts.

If the elections are held tomorrow, not in six to seven weeks’ time, how would the voters in the three provinces exercise their universal franchise? How many would bother to walk up to the polling booth and cast their votes? How many would vote for the Government candidate and how many would for the Opposition candidates? These questions could be answered in a reasonable manner if one would take into consideration the recent trends in the behavior of the voter, especially after the cessation of the war in the North and the resounding victory for the Rajapaksas at the Presidential and General Elections in 2010.

Yet one cannot compare apples with oranges; apples need to be compared with apples and oranges with oranges. People vote in the PC lections in a different way from the Presidential and General Elections. To obtain an accurate reading of the voter’s mind in the forthcoming PC elections, one has to compare with the results of the last PC elections held in 2009 for these provinces, except in the case of the Northern Province. Let us examine it now:

Allow me to examine the Wayamba Province in this column while an attempt will be made in my subsequent columns to deal with the Northern and Central Provinces separately.

Wayamba Province

Total poll 1,009,860 60% 274,014 56%

If elections are held tomorrow, forecast for the United National Party would be dismal, given the following reasons:

1. Dayasiri Jayasekera, the most popular UNPer in the Kurunegala district just joined the Government and is contesting the elections as the UPFA Chief Ministerial candidate

2. The leader of the UNP list is as unpopular as the one who contested the Anuradhapura district, at the last PC elections held in that district last year.

3. Ashok Abeysinghe whose popularity is second only to that of Dayasiri Jayasekera is totally alienated by the UNP and its leader and most likely would not take part in the election campaign. The UNP voter would take this as an excuse to stay away from the polling booth on Election Day.

4. Palitha Range Bandara, the Puttalam District UNP Parliamentarian enjoys the same popularity, if not more, like Abeysinghe in Kurunegala. His stubborn stand against the Party leader and its General Secretary will be seen as a mark of protest by the UNP stalwarts in the district and would have a telling effect on the UNP voter-base.

5. Sarath Fonseka’s teams in both districts would also be outlets for the disgruntled diehard UNPers who do not want to vote for the UPFA but see the need to send a message to their own party leadership and thus would be attracted to Fonseka. However, Dayasiri’s defection to the UPFA made a serious dent in Fonseka’s campaign and his performance in these elections might be marginal, if not totally disappointing.

Forecast:

Once again, I emphasize, if the elections are held tomorrow, the UNP will not obtain more than 20% of the total polled in the Wayamba Province. In Kurunegala its share might come down to about 18%-20% while in the Puttalam district, the result would be in the region of 20%-22%. Sarath Fonseka’s candidates might garner 3% – 5% in both districts and if they manage to obtain anything above that, then the electorate is definitely sending a very stark and clear signal not only to the leaders of both parties, the UNP and UPFA, but generally to the country as a whole that enough is enough.

In making these ascertainments, what has been given emphasis and weight is the trends as against snapshot pictures of the electorate which are usually associated with election-forecasting. Nate Silver, the election analyst who predicted the outcomes in both the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential elections to the closest number of Electoral College votes, did not do any independent polls. But he had the uncanny ability and an unprejudiced mind to analyze the various trends in the polls conducted by respected polling groups and read the ‘reasonability’ of the American voter’s mind. The most repeated mistake made by forecasters is the inability to read the reasonability of the voter’s mind. Unlike pundits, activists and diehard supporters of political parties, the average voter is a very reasonable person. He or she decides on whom to vote for within the context of what he or she gains at the end of the process. Provincial Council elections are not held to change governments nor are they held as referenda on national issues although some national issues might play some prominent role in the campaigns.

Given that context, the Sri Lankan voter will decide on September 21 who should handle the affairs of his or her province for the next few years. In that premise, as always, the credibility of the local candidate does matter and the campaign team that is on the field on behalf of each candidate plays no less a role in that too. We simply cannot afford to mistake the noise for the signal. Those who get entangled in this mixed web would be ultimately classified as those who failed to predict right. It is appropriate to quote Nate Sliver at this time. In his book “The Signal and Noise” Silver wrote thus: “Distinguishing the signal from the noise requires both scientific knowledge and self-knowledge: the serenity to accept the things we cannot predict, the courage to predict the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”