The Role of the Economy, Security and Party Leader Acceptance in Forecasting the 2020 General Election in Jamaica

Abstract

Three econometric models were built to predict the 2020 General Election in Jamaica. These are the economics and security model (model1), the economics and security model with JLP leader acceptance (model 2), and the economics and security model with PNP leader acceptance (model 3). All three models accurately predicted a win for the Jamaica Labour Party. These models show how the macro-economy, security concerns and party leader popularity influence election outcome, with similar findings in the literature. However, there are peculiarities in Latin America and the Caribbean because the Jamaican voters respond to economic and security concerns in different ways than the voters in the global north. For e.g. increases in the debt to GDP ratio and the homicide rate predicted a JLP win. We therefore need to understand how voter microlevel characteristics, meso-level patterns of relationships and macro-level institutions influence election outcomes within and across Latin America and the Caribbean.