Poll Survey – Sri Lanka Presidential Election 2019

After six weeks of tracking polling sentiments interesting insights emerge- many of them unprecedented in Sri Lankan elections. Survey reveals of an edge by Sajith Premadasa - the Presidential candidate over his direct competitor, Presidential candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Also, Survey reveals that Sajth Premadasa is involved in National Politics from the day he entered politics, whereas Gotabaya Rajapaksa lacks national political experience other than his involvement in matters connected with Defence.

Furthermore, there are no corruption charges nor allegations against Sajith Premadasa so far. Also, the minority communities of Sri Lanka -the Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamils of Indian Origin and Muslims – will not feel uncomfortable in dealing with Sajith even though he is a Sinhalese Buddhist who believes in a unitary Sri Lanka and insists on giving Buddhism the foremost place in this country.

As far as the minority communities of Sri Lanka are concerned, they do not favor Gotabaya Rajapaksa due to his conduct on the lines of murky ‘triumphalism’ against them in the immediate post-war times.

Polls Survey tentatively reveals –

Sajith Premadasa - 52%
Gotabaya Rajapaksa 36 %
Anura Kumara Disanayake 8%
Others - 04 %

There are also several criminal charges against Gotabaya Rajapaksa - Human rights defenders’ voicing various accusations, and the recent Appeal Court case on his Sri Lankan citizenship. Fortunately, or unfortunately the case was dismissed. The brave human rights defenders have now appealed against this ‘Decision’ to the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, the poll survey also reveals that they have triangulated the analysis (Via the stratified data) from multiple directions including Rural/Urban, Gender, Age, Ethnicity, Caste and Religion and summarized the findings below.

As reported previously, overall average favoring Sajit Premadasa among first time voters is 55% (Comprising Female 66% and Male 46% to SP). Voters aged over 60 favors SP by nearly 70% (Comprising approximately Female 63% and Male 70% to SP). Male voters aged over 60 have swung decisively to SP particularly in the rural areas.

Although Gotabaya Ranjapaksa is ahead among urban voters (well over 60%), this segment consists of only 19% of registered voters. Almost 81% of voters are rural. A candidate has to convince a majority of the 81% to get to the 50.1% mark. We see SP being ahead in the rural vote across traditional party lines. This is consistent with the cross-party majority support for SP from the Karava, Salagama and Durave sub sectors.

Among ethnicities Sajit Premadasa has a commanding majority among Tamils, Muslims and Indian Tamils, averaging 80%. Similarly, across religions Tamil Hindu and Muslim support exceeds 80%, with Sinhala Christian (55%) and Tamil Christian (64%).

For Gotabaya Rajapaksa to win he needs over 62% of the Sinhala Buddhist vote on an overall voter turnout of 82% (with North and East turnout averaging 75%). We estimate Gotabaya Rajapaksa as not exceeding 56% of this segment. Leakage of some core Buddhist votes to Anura Kumara Disanayaka and Mahes Senanayake also does not help Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Hence, based on multiple analysis over many data points we call the 2019 Presidential elections for Sajit Premadas who will emerge victorious on the first count.

This is a survey and is intended to assist the voters to make up their minds in tomorrow’s Presidential poll – Nothing more or nothing less – No pun intended.

- Asian Tribune -