2nd Round Poll Numbers - Update

Siglo XXI

In Guatemala, Prensa Libre and Prodatos came out with the first poll numbers ahead of the November 6th runoff between Otto Perez Molina of the Patriotic Party and Manuel Baldizon of LIDER. The poll was conducted between October 4 and 8 among 1,204 Guatemalans using the same ballot (party symbol and presidential photo) that voters will use.

Using just the valid vote, 55.8% of those surveyed indicated that they intended to vote for Perez next month and the remaining 44.2% intended to vote for Baldizon. However, Prensa Libre does not tell us what percentage of the 1,204 responses were invalid or undecided. We really need these number to make sense of the poll. If undecideds are evenly split, it doesn't matter. However, if undecideds break for Baldizon this could be a much closer race. Remember the first round polling does not appear so off if one only looks at polls that report undecideds.

It's only one poll so I am going to wait until others come out before giving the second round victory to Perez. And even if every poll this month gives Perez a victory, that might not be enough. In 2007, Perez won six out of the seven polls conducted between the first and second round vote before losing to Alvaro Colom.

Perez received 36.03% of the first round vote and Baldizon followed a distant second with 23.20%.

***Boz alerted me to some information on the undecideds. When the blank or null votes are included, Perez has 49.4% and Baldizon 39.2%. 11% of those surveyed completed blank or null votes. I know it would be a longer newspaper title, but these numbers are the more accurate ones and should be the headline rather than 56% for Perez.