The Gallup-Hoy poll taken just one week ago shows that inflation, crime and blackouts are the major problems facing the nation. Gallup Dominicana carried out the survey for Hoy newspaper. According to the interviews most of the population felt that the economy was either bad or very bad. Only 12% felt that the economy was “good.”
At the very top of the chart of major problem areas were inflation and the cost of living (61.3%) and crime (61.1%). These were followed by blackouts, unemployment and lack of potable water. Crime was considered to be the wave of robberies and assaults carried out by youth gangs. While on the first page of today’s Hoy, the headlines says “61% say economy is bad” the full story reveals that the true figure is that 52.0% describe it as bad when referring to their personal, individual economic situation, and 61.7% when asked about the nation as a whole. More revealing, perhaps, is the fact that the Gallup poll found that 48% of those polled considered that the DR was going down a bad path as opposed to 42% that saw the country on a good path.
It must be mentioned that the political composition of those polled did influence their answers. Of those members of the reformist PRSC that were surveyed, 69.5% were negative, 83.8% of the PRD members were negative, and surprisingly, 48.5% of the PLD members were negative. Only 18% of PLD members could say that they found things to be positive, against 12.2% of the PRSC members and 3.7% of the PRD members. The poll included interviews with 1,200 people during the 29 July – 2 August period. Dominicans of voting age were polled coinciding with the first year in government of the present Leonel Fernandez administration.