Your little Monday poll: Capriles blowing the field out

"Capoldo" about to "landslide"?

Election must be close, finally major pollster are coming out with the goods, well, some goods at least.  I just received in my mail box the Datanalisis phone survey of the 8 largest cities of Venezuela.  I do not know whether it is on the web, so you are going to have to trust me on this one (and I can forward it to you if you wish it so, just write me). [Added later: the poll is on the net here] Before you read the rest keep this in mind, it is a phone poll of major cities and Capriles is expected to do better in that range whereas Perez is expected to do better in the Podunck polls.  Still, no matter what caveat one may want to put it looks like the endorsement of Leopoldo Lopez to Capriles has sealed the result.

The first slide has a little surprise: it measures whether people have heard of the candidates. They have, all at the same level more or less, which proves the debates have had following enough and thus were beneficial for voter education.  However that slide also shows the likes and dislikes and Maria Corina Machado, MCM, comes out the loser with the higher negatives.  Obviously a truth and reality based campaign is not of the like of the average Venezuelan.

The second slide measures the Leopoldo effect.  It shows how people changed their voting intention between January 23 and today.  Capriles jumps from 42 to 61% intention while the other stay the same and Pablo Perez actually loses 2 points.

The following slides are of the beauty contest type and thus no interest considering the quickie nature of the poll.

At the end there is a slightly more interesting slide that would suggest that the Leopoldo endorsement has attracted to Capriles more than just the bulk of  his voters: the undecided portion of mid January has been decanting for Capriles helped along by the sense of unity that Leopoldo's endorsement brought.

Finally, what troubles me the most: MCM at only 5% in spite of everything.  I was not expecting her to win but after her January confrontation with Chavez and her strong debate performances I am troubled that she is not getting at least 10%, in spite of her negatives.  Then again I have limited trust in Datanilisis which comes across to me as having an agenda of their own through their polling system, even if they tend to be right when Chavez is in the poll.  Let's see if Datanalisis will be a victim of a Mockus effect...

So there you have it, the highlights.