this is waste-of-time verbal gymnastics . . . get to the point

"turnout" . . . as in whose people are showing up to vote; simple, no?

I suggest that you check your data.  Region 8 only delivered 900 votes for the AFC.  It only becomes significant because almost no one votes there.

The AFC lost 3k votes in Region 4 in 2011.  What made the difference for the AFC were the 10k PPP Nagamootoo votes that it gained in Regions 5 and 6.  In 2006 the AFC won 28k votes, and in 2011 increasing its vote count by another 8k. Subtract the PPP Nagamootoo voters and the AFC count declined.

I suggest that the AFC ought to prove that it is making inroads in rural coastal Guyana, rather then just claiming that they have.  Then you will have "data" to refute PPP claims that the AFC has lost its PPP Nagamootoo vote.

Corruption and mismanagement didn't begin in 2012.  Yet those same voters didn't show up in 2006 or 2011.  So why do you assume that by telling people what they already know will get them out.  They might think that the APNU/AFC might be no better.

I suggest that the coalition craft a message based on how they will improve the lives of nonvoters and interact with them to find out why they either stopped voting, or among the youth, never bothered to vote.

That proves nothing.  MPs are selected from a list with voters playing no role in their selection.  The various parties in Guyana all wish to pretend that the are multiracial so engage in tokenism.

I'm an eternal optimist and I think the extensive exposure of the PPP recently in scandal after scandal will have an impact on the Guyanese people.

I also have faith in the opposition being able to connect the ppl to local issues affecting them.

Karl Rove here thought I was talking about the race of individual MPs

I was obviously talking about the racial vote that results in the seat allocations of the National Assembly and how they are currently allocated among the various parties.

LMAO LMAO

Someday I too would like a unicorn

Why don't you check the 1991 census and explain why you think that the mixed population has increased so much.

It isn't migration as mixed people can be expected to migrate at the same rates as other coastal Guyanese.

So it must be births, suggesting that many of these mixed people are either too young to vote, or are disproportionately among the under 30 group where there are lower rates of voting.

Amerindians will also be under represented in the voting population, as with higher birth rates, more of its population are too young to vote.  In addition ambivalence towards coastal dominated voting, and difficulties getting to the polling stations due to bad transportation means that Amerindians are less likely to vote.

So put way the 2002 census.  Its proves nothing.

Oh Great Shitstain I heard kwame is willing to be your unicorn.

What point are you trying to make.  I looked at the same data and came to the conclusions that I referred to.  The Indian vote is more than the 43% indicated in the 2002 census. 

So don't put excessive reliance on the mixed and Amerindian populations to rescue the APNu/AFC coalition of the 10k PPP Nagamootoo voters rush back to the PPP.  Unless APNU/AFC find other people to vote for them the PPP will regain parliamentary control.

The AFC lost 3k voters in 2011 and the 10k votes which it gained in regions 5 and 6 were PPP voters supporting a man who they trusted.  What you don't know is whether they still trust him now that he is embedded within a PNC dominated alliance.

BTW I told the AFC that they were going to lose Region 4 votes, and I said so long before November.  The then AFC fanatics screamed at me and called me a PPP soup licker.  They had nothing to tell me when the election results came out.  That is except for Gerhard who conceded that I was right.

If I were PPP, I would not be complacent.

in all seriousness, the only hope of beating the PPP lay in an opposition coalition.

the AFC may have sold its values and soul, but given good PR and marketing (of which I have seen none) there is still a good chance of the opposition winning the election.

This was due to APNU which was slammed in 2006 when many of its supporters refused to vote because they resented Corbin.

Don't get too excited by that.  Turn out remains well below 1997 and 2001 levels.

The multiracial AFC/APNU Coalition will bring the voters out.  Moses and David have really showed great statesmanship to take that step of courage, at that decisive moment in history that will change the destiny of our beautiful Guyana.

We bow to these nationalist leaders.

Both Shaitaan and I draw our conclusions from looking at actual voting.  I think that he moderately exaggerates the Indian vote and under counts the non Indian votes.

Needless to say the Indian vote is still much larger than others.  The PPP will win the bulk of these, can expect a plurality among Amerindians, based on an analysis of elections since 1997, and can buy off between 5-10% of the black/mixed vote.

APNU/AFC has an uphill task and must generate the excitement that they represent a different and more open style of governance than Guyanese have traditionally been exposed to. 

Screaming "PPP baaad because dem corrupt" doesn't resonate in a country where petty clerks also demand their cut. What might impress is convincing folks that they will earn enough so that they will no longer be forced to be corrupt.

Every body knows that the PPP is corrupt, and yet the PPP only lost the majority by 5k votes.

It is the ability of the opposition to connect to the population, and to devise mechanisms to make them feel included in developing solutions to the problems that they face which will make the difference.

Bringing back some of the excitement that I assume must have existed in 1953, when Guyanese put aside racial differences and supported the Jagan/Burnham PPP.

The votes have collapsed by 15% between 2001 and 2011.  The party which figures out why this happened and re-engages these people in the electoral process will win. 

APNU/AFC stand a chance to woo these voters if they work hard because the PPP is stuck in playing nasty games and in pretending that they have achieved so much, when few Guyanese credit them for much.

APNU/AFC have lots to do and ought not to fall into the trap of thinking that 40%+11%=51%, so they have won.

How do you know?  Many might see two politicians who let the PPP walk all over them, despite controlling parliament, now trying to save their necks by coming together.

If APNU/AFC wish to dump the PPP they need to go out an earn it.

I never can understand why some people insist on ignoring past voter behavior to predict future voter behavior based on their hopes and dreams.

My model says 54% Indians plus 4% Amerindians for a PPP "universe" of 58% of the electorate. This is the rosiest for the PPP. Granted.

Yours (the most Coalition friendly model articulated here grounded on actual votes) have the Indians pegged at 48% plus 6% Amerindians for a PPP "universe" of 54% of the electorate.

Between us, I'm basically saying the PPP can appeal to as much as 58% of the actual voters and you think their upper ceiling is 54% of the actual voters. We are only separated by a meager 4%.

4 bloody percent separates the high PPP-friendly estimate and the low PPP-friendly estimate. Margins of error are higher than this.

This isn't terribly promising. I don't see why they're counting their Vice Presidencies so early.

P.S....We both did not account for a little PPP bottom house poll site vote frigging by having overseas and dead Indians cast votes. Or outright buying votes (GYD $10,000 per vote for 5,000 votes would only cost the PPP USD$250,000--chump change). Or that some of the mixed voters may actually vote PPP. 5k votes make one whole seat in Parliament.

P.P.S.....Percentage of Guyana's population who cast votes

2001....54% (according to the 2002 census number of 751,223)

2006....45%  (according to the 2002 census number of 751,223)

2011....46%  (according to the 2012 census number of 747,884)

In 2015, 54% of the electorate would be 403,857 (highest)

In 2015, 45% of the electorate would be 336,547 (lowest)

A mean of the two would be 49% equaling 370,202.

Assuming arguendo  a mean of 49% is the turnout, the net gain would be 28,076 additional voters to the 2011 voters.

Best case scenario, APNU holds all its 139,678 voters and adds 75% of the additional turnout (highly unlikely to be this favorable of a split but possible), with a net gain of 21,057 voters, bringing them to 160,735.

The PPP similarly holds all of it's 166,340 voters and adds a paltry 7,019 (25% of new 2015 voters) for a total of 173,359.

Of the AFC's 2011 35,333 voters, if they split evenly at 17,333 between the PPP/C and APNU this results:

PPP/C        191,025      52%

APNU/AFC   178,401      48%

A PPP/C win by a close but still decisive absolute majority margin of 12,624.

This of course assumes APNU does not lose at least 1 seat or more (worth 5,200 votes each) to Mark Benschop. A highly likely possibility.

all i asked for is clarity on what is meant by "voting electorate"

if, as it seems, you two agree that it references the racial breakdown of adults on the voting rolls (Indos 54% and 48%), then why just not say so?

this waste-of-time avalanche of useless words [addressing side issues to stake out fresh ground on arguments already lost, and sometimes ranging far afield on non-issues conjured out of thin air] to deal with very simple things is so tiresome

You are following CaribJ convoluted argument. He believes 5000 votes is what we are dealing with but the circumstance where 17000 is missing from region 6 to start with means you are not even close.

Also, the numbers are not Indians 54 percent. You are overshooting the mark by some 14 percent. Indians are around 39 percent with blacks around 32 and mixed 18 Even if they take all of the Amerindian vote they are not making up the difference. Self identified mixed are not voting PPP. They did not vote PPP the last time.

Of course I am dealing with the raw population numbers but they will fall closely withing the same range in electors.  Granted the number of 75K new voters is problematic one can assume they break down by population frequencies for ethnicity as well minus the 6K new Chinese voters.

You are not dealing with the same demographics as 2011. Further, the African and mixed votes are more animated this time. Assuming the the PPP takes 100% indian vote they still start off at a deficit.

He is completely wrong that Indians are 54 percent of the electorate. That is a statistical impossibility.

i know . . . which is why he refused to furnish a clear answer to my direct question(s)

I wholeheartedly concede that I may have overestimated the Indian percentage of the electorate. I am not an oracle.

It is my honest opinion though. Feel free to disagree. I don't purport to know for sure.

I did understand this seems to go against conventional wisdom but without a 54% Indian share of the total voting electorate (the people who actually vote), I cannot otherwise account for 30 of the PPP's 32 seats and 5 of the AFC's 7 seats.

I do think that the APNU/AFC can win, but the voters who show up will have to be a very different mix than those who did 3 years ago.  I fear that many armchair analysts are adding 40+11=51%.  

No one knows what that 11% will do.  No one also knows whether those who supported the opposition parties in 2011, and expected their control of parliament to allow them to reduce some of the PPPs excesses are now disappointed with the whole process, as they see the opposition reduced to picketing on the streets as if they have no more power than Mark Benschop.

APNU/AFC will have to go out and find new voters to show up to offset some of the confused voters who don't understand the coalition.  They will have to explain why they will be better than the PPP.

.

The fact that you are so stubborn and inflexible that you cannot understand concepts other than your own is your issue.

What Shaitaan and I are attempting to deal with is the racial composition of the people who actually vote.  People who are old enough to vote but do not register, or who are registered but do not vote will be irrelevant, as only ballots cast will be counted.

I have stated for a whole set of reasons that Indians are OVER represented among voters. Amerindians and mixed people are UNDER represented and Africans are about evenly so.

What is evident is

1. Large numbers of people, especially Africans and Amerindians are not voting.

2.  Because the PPP mobilized Indians in the past voting is more in their DNA.

Now what might happen in this election is that Indians might stay home and more African/mixed voters might show up.

But the APNU/AFC will have to do two things.

1. Register the non voters (youth of all races and many Africans and Amerindians).  Then get them excited and out to vote.

2. Cut off the PPP racial panic by indicating that the contemporary PNC isn't the demon that many Indians imagine it to be, and that Nagamootoo will have major influence within the coalition.

The fact remains that many Indians who are 40 and over have very bad memories of the Burnham era, tales that they have passed onto younger generations.  The racially based post election violence of 1997 and 2001 would have underscored even among these younger Indians a basis to distrust the PNC.   So its no point ignoring that elephant in the room. 

The fact is that the PNC wasn't run by Granger at that time, nor has it engaged in post election violence for the past 14 years.  That is the point that will have to be made.

The reality is that those who base the motivated electorate as being 40% Indian are making a huge mistake.

Stormy said that racial voting will ensure a PPP defeat, based on the 2012 census.  Well it didn't in an election held a few months before this census.  Because had Nagamootoo not cut into that PPP bloc the PPP would still have been the  majority gov't.

yaaaaaawwwnnn . . .

That's is pure speculation. You are boring with this babbling nonsense.

I will join you in a yaaaawwwnn too when on May 20th (you know Guyanese cannot count election results in one day like almost every one else) the results come in with a PPP 50.1% of the votes.

The PPP lost by 5000 votes.  Nagamootoo increased the AFC vote in Regions 5 and 6 by 10,000 over the 2006 result.  He wasn't able to replicate that in other regions of Guyana.

I will suggest that there is more evidence to support my thesis than yours, which suggests that the AFC in 2015 has those votes in the bag, and so can romp home to victory.  You don't know what those people who voted for him 3 years ago when he had nothing to do with the PNC are thinking todayt.

Quick say something nice about the PNC........oh I see that you cannot, but you still are thinking that you own those 10,000 votes, even if now they will be delivered to a PNC dominated coalition.

as i said elsewhere, your passive-aggressive shyte is tired

yaaaaaawwwwnnn

No problem.  While you cry when the PPP wins with 50.1% of the vote, I will repeat the "I told you so" when I warned the AFC in 2011 that there is no way that they would get more than 15% of the votes given that they ignored the black vote, and in fact every one who wasn't in Berbice.  They had predicted more than 35%. and replacing the PNC as the leading opposition party.

They did even worse than I thought that they would do.

u really is a tiresome silly one, aren't u?

Continue to get stuck in the mud and obsess about me, and not about the prospects of a PPP victory if the AFC turns out to be as stubborn as you are.  Thinking that the majority of anti PPP Indians aren't confused about being the AFC being the wife in a PNC dominated marriage.

This 40% Indian share of the voting electorate is shocking to even consider. Shocking as in being remarkable for it's error. These 40 percenters are making the argument that the PPP is Guyana's multiracial party or that 3 years has remarkably altered the electorate.

If this was remotely true, arguendo, the PPP would be running after the AFC offering them Cabinet seats in return for a Motion of Confidence in Parliament and doing everything to avoid an election. But they're not.

The PPP may be stupid in administration. But they know how to win elections.

ow bai, when u use da word "obsess" . . . tek time look in de mirror nah

is u jump pan meh threads and pick up irrational fire rage like a rale antiman for yuh new best fren (de race con man) shaitaan

you ever see any one party in a democracy  in office for ever 

Maybe not "forever" but with similar longevity as the PPP and much longer. Look from Japan to Malaysia to India. It happens all the time.

They gone to Richmond Hill but Richmond Hill does not vote in Guyana.