Politics
Jamaica elections update: Andrew Holness and Portia Simpson-Miller almost tied
Jamaica Prime Minister., Andrew Holness
(NationNews Barbados) – More amd more Jamaicans are starting to believe that the Andrew Holness administration is steering the Jamaican economy in the right direction.
This might not be enough to ensure an election victory for the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) however, as a majority of persons remain unconvinced.
The Government also remains in the negative when Jamaicans rate its performance in running the country and trails the People’s National Party (PNP) by two percentage points in the latest Gleaner-commissioned Bill Johnson poll.
The pollster has also found that 54 percent of Jamaicans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. But that is a big improvement on the 68 percent who had told the government to change course in June when Johnson checked the pulse of the nation.
In the latest poll conducted on December 17 and 18, 27 percent of the country said the Holness administration is on the right track.
This is up from 14 percent in June, 18 percent in October and November and 22 percent in early December.
A further 19 percent of Jamaicans now say they don’t know if the country is going in the wrong or right direction. That is about the same as June when 18 percent had responded with a don’t know to the question.
Unemployment, crime and poverty remain the major problems facing the country with financial problems also high on the list of problem areas facing the country.
In the meantime, 35 percent of the country say the Government is doing a good or very good job. That is nine percentage points above the 26 percent who gave the administration a similar rating while it was being led by Bruce Golding in June.
The number of people saying the Government is doing a bad or very bad job has declined to 37 percent from the 44 percent high when Holness replaced Golding.
11 percent of Jamaicans said they were not sure how to rate the performance of the administration while 18 percent say the Government’s performance was neither good nor bad.
The latest Johnson poll was conducted in 84 communities across the island with a sample size of 1,008 and a sampling error of plus or minus 4 percent.