Govt. losing support

Govt. losing support
Prime Minister, Dr. Hubert Minnis.

44% approval rating for Minnis administration

Voter satisfaction is on a steady decline since the Minnis administration’s May 2017 sweeping win at the polls, according to the latest poll by Public Domain.

The figures, released Wednesday, indicate a satisfaction rate of 44 per cent for the Free National Movement (FNM) government, compared to numbers released for the same period last year.

“Public Domain releases this kind of information because we often hear people make assumptions about what Bahamians believe and how Bahamians feel,” said Senior Communications and Policy Strategist, Joey Gaskins Jr. about the census.

“Beyond the research and strategy work we do for our clients, we want to build a culture where opinions are formed, and decisions are made based on evidence, not assumptions.

According to the poll taken, general satisfaction with Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis and the FNM has declined by 18 per cent since May 2017, with several outstanding factors:

  • The number of respondents generally “not satisfied” with FNM administration increased from five per cent after the May 2017 elections to 33 per cent in April 2018. That represents a 28% increase over the last year.
  • Since the election, the number of respondents who believe the country is generally going in the “right direction” has declined from 67 per cent to 40 per cent, while the number of respondents who believe the country is generally going in the “wrong direction” increased from 21 per cent to 39 per cent.
  • Specifically, the number of respondents who believe the country is going “very much in the right direction” has dropped from 25 per cent in September 2017 to 12 per cent in April 2018.

“What we are observing is slippage in support since the elections. I don’t, however, believe the slippage is permanent and there is still time to recover,” he said.

“But one thing our polling over the last seven years has taught us is that once the Bahamian people form negative attitudes toward an administration, they stop listening, and once they stop listening, it is very difficult to regain their support.”

Public Domain is a market and opinion research firm in The Bahamas. Bahamian owned, the company has been in existence for seven years with a focus in qualitative and quantitative research. This research is supported by an 18-seat Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) call center.

The company has also expanded its service-mix to include communications strategy, policy strategy, and government affairs, as well as corporate training and facilitation.

Public Domain released its April 2018 poll data on:

  1. satisfaction with the government’s performance and
  2. whether the country is going in the right or wrong direction.

Results of the phone poll show a steady decline, since May 2017, in public opinion on both satisfaction and right direction/wrong direction of the country. The data collected by phone polling from March 15 to April 7, 2018, relies on a random, weighted sampling of 1,000 Bahamians.