Ferrer takes the lead in poll for Popular Democratic Resident Commissioner race

With less than a week to go before the June 5 primary in Puerto Rico, Hector Ferrer has taken the lead in the race for the resident commissioner nomination of the Popular Democratic Party. With 55.56% of support among respondents, to Angel Rosa’s 39.39%, Ferrer has flipped the trend in his favor. And this is not the only good news in the poll for him.

These is the first in a series of posts publishing the results of the May edition of our poll.

Favorability

Angel Rosa claims victory in terms of favorability, where he has the edge in terms of better perception from PDP members. 68.69% of respondents said they had a favorable view of Rosa, versus 53.54% for Ferrer. The latter also claimed much high negative views from respondents with 41.41% of respondents claiming they had an unfavorable view of the former PDP president.

Loyalty

In terms of party loyalty depending on the outcome of the primary, both candidates got a mixed bag. While Rosa can claim of higher percentage of his opponent’s supporters keeping line and voting under the PDP in November, his nomination would also result in a significantly higher number of voters switching sides to the New Progressive Party for the Washington seat. Ferrer on the other hand, claims slightly less of his opponent’s supporters, but those most of those who defect from PDP chose the None of the above option, instead of selecting the NPP nominee.

In an election where the NPP is the only other viable party, this matters, and Ferrer’s position has a slight advantage.

Demographics

Age wise the poll received a rather representative sample, and Ferrer dominated in almost all age groups. Keeping in line with our previous poll, Rosa’s strongest performance against Ferrer included the 45-54 and 55-64 groups, showing now Ferrer has the edge with younger voters, with Rosa dominating among older voters.

Considering gender, our poll registered an oversampling of male voters. Because of the relatively small amount of respondents, and because the age representation curve resembled a normal bell curve, we did not weigh for gender in these results. One thing to note, is that while the sample was very small, Ferrer has the edge among female voters, also following the results of our previous poll.

When it comes to education level, Ferrer dominated because of strong support across most groups, while Rosa claimed victory among those reporting having a bachelor’s degree. Because of the low sample size, there was no clear distinction among highly educated and those with little to no formal education.

Now, because we obtained a considerably smaller sample size of PDP voters, there is a chance this poll can be significantly skewed. That said, percentage wise Rosa reflected a decrease of little more than six percentage points, as Ferrer gained more than 18, which could very well indicate a shift from Rosa supporters, as well as those who were previously undecided or had selected the none of the above option, since these two options reflected a decrease of six and five percentage points respectively.

For now, as best we can tell, Ferrer has the edge going into the primary Sunday. We should know around 5pm on June 5 whether the May edition of our 2016 Elections Puerto Rico poll was right.