Leader of the St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) Dr Denzil Douglas has dismissed the recent CADRES poll by regional pollster Peter Wickham as “an exercise in dupery and unprofessionalism.”
Wickham’s press release claims to have surveyed 1,000 people across the Federation and concluded, in the main, that the Prime Minister, Dr. Timothy Harris, is the preferred leadership option of the majority of Kittitians and Nevisians as well as being the most popular within Team Unity.
Douglas, who is also Leader of the Opposition, has rejected the press release as laughable given its many obvious flaws.
“We utterly reject Peter Wickham’s press release,” said Dr. Douglas as he addressed an enthusiastic crowd of supporters at a Town Hall Meeting on Thursday night.
Outlining several reasons why he considers the report to be invalid, Dr. Douglas pointed first to the date of the poll.
In his view, the poll was conducted since May or June of 2018, almost six months ago and it is “entirely unacceptable that a poll done in May of this year is only now being reported on.
“A poll is a snapshot of people’s opinions at a particular point in time…Peter Wickham and Timothy Harris should know better,” said Dr. Douglas, who further noted that 44 per cent of respondents refused to give an answer or was uncommitted in their support.
Of the 1,000 people who were interviewed for the poll 440 of them did not respond. This significantly reduces the sample size to just 560 which is not sufficiently representative of a population of 50,000 people.
“This renders the statement, ‘a majority of Kittitians and Nevisians are convinced that the country is on the right track/heading in the right direction’ a complete venture in hyperbole,” Dr. Douglas said.
He also noted that the poll did not ask respondents directly who they would vote for.
The only question that was asked to determine voter sentiment in this regard was ‘which party or coalition group they believed would win an election at this time.’
“The only way to find out which party someone will vote for, is to ask them the question about who they would vote for directly. No other question can substitute,” said Dr. Douglas.
In light of these many methodological flaws and deficiencies with Peter Wickham/CADRES poll, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party has completely rejected the Wickham poll results as “biased, unprofessional and useless.”
Dr Douglas is a comedian of great proportion. CADRES performed polls for Douglas in the past, the results were accepted and even in 1995 part of the results were used as an advertisement on the radio during the 1995 election season. I am sure the methodology used by CADRES then will be no less in the recent poll. So Douglas says he rejects the results of the polls only because it does not favour his party.
Singing the blues Dr Douglas?
I only have one question for Dr Douglas, have you ever used CADRES and what was your response when they did polls for you?