Guatemala prepares itself for Sunday´s general elections and there are more battles than just the one between the candidates. El Periodico and Prensa Libre, the nation´s most important newspapers, are fighting their own war: a battle of the polls.
Though both newspapers place conservative former general Otto Pérez Molina firmly in the lead, polls vary widely. This week the last Encuesta Libre, Prensa Libre´s official polling, came in. Mr. Pérez Molina commands 42,6% of voter preference, with Manuel Baldizon far behind on 24%. Such a scenario would mean that (as usual) a second round would have to be held in November. A candidate can only win the first round with 50% of the votes plus one - an absolute majority.
El Periodico, however, clearly has a different idea on voter preference. In their last poll before the elections it stated that Pérez Molina enjoys 48,9% of voter preference, 30% ahead of Baldizon, who only commands 18% of the potential votes. El Periodico even went as far as to state that a victory for Pérez Molina in the first round becomes more likely by the day.
A difference of 6% in the polls only a few days before the elections is, of course, fairly common. But both polls paint a completely different scenario.
Marvin del Cid, head of El Periodico´s department of research, told us a few days ago that ¨If a second round will be held, the situation will be completely different. Politics in Guatemala are a game of exchanging political favors, and favors and alliances made for the first round can be turned around completely in the second.¨
With that in mind, we should also point out that voter abstentionism is high in Guatemala, with a great many voters either undecided or simply uninterested in the elections. Moreover, since Sandra Torres has been denied her candidacy by the Supreme Court, the electoral landscape has changed profoundly.
Torres commanded some 18% of voter preference prior to her exit from the campaign. That significant percentage was redestributed over the other candidates, with Baldizon as the great winner: he gained some 10% and became second in the race.
But polls are notoriously politicized in Guatemala. Newspapers publish them according to general tendencies, but with exaggerated numbers that favor their preferred scenarios. For example: there is no love lost between El Periodico and Manuel Baldizon, causing the newspaper to strongly prefer a victory of Pérez Molina in the first round. The paper, of course, knows that at least a few per cent of voters haven´t made up their mind yet. And seeing as how everybody loves a winner, pushing the headline towards a possible Pérez Molina victory in the first round might just become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The candidates themselves like to play with polls as well. Eduardo Suger, the conservative senior citizen running third in all polls, publicly stated last week that Prensa Libre´s poll (that gave him only 8%) was ´a joke´. And the same two newspapers also sell entire pages where political parties can publish their own polls, exaggerating the numbers even more.
The result of this fascinating dance of the polls is that no one really knows where we´re at this Sunday. Will there be a second round, or will Pérez Molina win an absolute majority in the first? And how many supporters does Eduardo Suger really have? What are the possible scenarios?
As if that isn´t complicated enough, there may be some doubts over the margin of error in all these polls as well. For example: El Periodico´s poll states in tiny writing that the newspaper interviewed 1300 people in the whole country. The newspaper claims that the interviews were equally divided over all social, economic and educational levels of the population. How it managed that ´equal division´ wasn´t explained. Guatemala has 22 provinces and 333 municipalities. Levels of education, wealth, et cetera vary widely between different layers of society and between different regions. With only 60 people interviewed in every province, it is hard to imagine how such a poll could actually capture the general mood of the country. Nontheless, El Periodico claims a margin of error of only 3,1%.
With this Iwo Jima of numbers and statistics before us, very little is really certain in the Guatemalan elections. It might be a good idea to prepare for a few surprises tomorrow.