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Ashcroft Poll Asks Who's Hot And Who's Not In Politics
posted (September 25, 2024)
The Ashcroft Alliance has been commissioning a foreign firm named Viking Strategies to conduct political polling in Belize since 2010. And while it used to be a not so well kept secret in political circles - Ashcroft went public with it last year In June.

And he has again released this year's polling which was conducted frOm June 17th to August 6th 2024.

It's a lot to unpack, but the key findings about political perceptions are that only one in five persons support Shyne Barrow as UDP Leader, the Briceno Administration gets good reviews on its education and healthcare initiatives, while respondents questioned the government's competence.

For the 2025 Election Outlook it concludes, quote, "While the PUP is expected to win the next election, the margin is likely to be narrower than in 2020 due to concerns over crime and economic pressures."

The findings say that Crime Remains Top Concern, Economic Hardship Persists with Inflation and high costs of living continuing to be major concerns, and that Corruption Remains a major issue. In fact the poll notes that Public dissatisfaction with corruption has not changed significantly since 2017, with 13.9% of respondents naming it as a critical problem.

All this has fueled mass Voter Disillusionment - with the percentage of persons identifying as swing voters rising from 25% in 2017 to 37.6% in 2024, quote, "indicating declining loyalty to the PUP and UDP."

Notably, the poll found that relative poverty has decreased significantly form 2019 from 57% to 26%

In terms of the political leaders, almost half of the respondents had warm feeling towards PM Briceno, while less than a fifth felt that way about Shyne Barrow. Briceno was ranked as one of the most favorably viewed politicians, ranking 6 out of 36, while Shyne Barrow ranked 34th out of 36. And according to the poll, the most favorably viewed politicians are Cordel Hyde, Kevin Bernard and Kareem Musa, while Tracy Panton at fourth is the only UDP in the top. 10.

And, the politician with the highest unfavourability rating is John Saldivar, who is way ahead of the man in second, Port Loyola's Gilroy Usher followed by Michael Peyreffite in third.

968 people were polled and it has a 3.2% margin of error.

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