The news daily Hoy continues to trickle out parts of its November 7-12 opinion poll of 1,000 Dominicans conducted in cooperation with the firm Hamilton & Staff. Today’s installment regards who the general public (as opposed to just the picks of the party faithful) feel should be the presidential candidates for the Reformista Party (PRSC) and the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD). In each case, poll participants were given a long list of possible party candidates and asked to pick who "should be" that party’s standard-bearer in the year 2000 elections. Regarding PRSC, 42% picked former Vice President Jacinto Peynado, who was PRSC’s presidential candidate in 1996. The runner-up was ex-President Joaquín Balaguer, with 14% of those polled, followed by Carlos Morales Troncoso with 8%. As for the PRD, 40% chose Milagros Ortiz Bosch, the Senator for the National District (DN), while 38% picked former Agriculture Secretary Hipólito Mejía, 10% former Santo Domingo mayor Fello Suberví, and only 5% PRD Secretary-General Hatuey Decamps. Hoy notes that in a similar poll it published last June, Ortiz Bosch had received 42% while Mejía only garnered only 31% and Suberví only 6%. Thus while support for Ortiz Bosch has remained more or less the same (within statistical margin of error), Mejía’s support has leaped and Suberví’s risen as well.
