The Turkeyn Research and Polling Institute (TRPI) earlier today rolled out an opinion poll to collect the views of Guyanese on a number of issues including current political matters such as the conduct of general and regional elections.
Opinion polls provide data base for research purposes as well as inform political parties of the views of voters.
The TRPI poll is being supervised by Trinidadian political analyst, Dr. Kirk Meighoo and will be conducted over the coming days throughout Guyana.
“The Guyana poll examines which political figure has the best shot at unseating the incumbent and which forces have a better prospect at government format. It also looks at whether the country should have a coalition government,” Dr. Meighoo explained at a press conference today.
TRPI will be conducting this exercise via continuous polling with the first tier commencing today and concluding on Monday.
According to Dr. Meighoo, it would be conducted in-person with surveyors placed in all 10 regions to take the opinions of about 3 to 400 participants. He noted that there would be a purposeful sampling as oppose to a random sampling, which can miss important groups.
“It will be a structure based on the demographic characteristics of the population, and that includes regions of residents and also ethnicity. So, we would want to make sure that our sample reflects the official demographic data so there will be that reflection,” Dr. Meighoo told reporters.
The political analyst further noted that this opinion poll, which is benefiting from overseas funding, is geared towards providing position of the country.
“It’s important in a democracy that people’s views are taken into account so this is to ensure that popular opinion can be taken into account by decision makers so they have some gage to know whether what they doing finds national support. Because, maybe they’ve been talking to their political supporters… but we don’t really yet know what the country as a whole think and this the only way we can find out. So, it’s really for better democratic governance,” Dr. Meighoo said.
The TRPI was founded by Professor Dr. Baytoram Ramharack in 1990 and conducted its first opinion poll the following year.
