Abinader will best Mejia with 57.6%

SANTO DOMINGO. The survey firm The Economic Center of the Cibao (CEC) places the presidential hopeful Luis Abinader in a comfortable position to win the nomination for the presidency in the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), since he is given 57.6% of the voters' intentions among the PRM rank and file, against 41.6% who said they would vote for them former President Hipolito Mejia.

In a general measurement, Abinader reached 47.9% against the 28.2% which Mejia received, with 21.3% not voting for either of the two and 2.6% did not know who they were going to vote for.

Given the question of which one should be the presidential candidate for the PRM, 61.5% of the citizens interviewed considered that Abinader was the choice, while 33% felt that Mejia should be the candidate. Some 5.5% did not know.

Within the PRM, Abinader climbed to 62.5% and Mejia to 37.5%.

Hipolito's reasons

When questioned regarding the reasons for which Mejia decided to try for the presidential nomination, 29.1% said that he did it because of ambition or egotism, 27.3% mentioned the pressures of his political circle, 19.7% said it was an act of personal responsibility, 16.2% said it was in the exercise of his rights and 7.7% did not have an opinion.

Upon questioning the PRM rank and file on the type of voting lists with which their presidential candidate should be elected, 55.4% indicated that it should be a semi - open list so that any citizen except the members of the PLD and the Reformists; there was 42.4% that favored that it should be a closed voting list only for the PRM rank and file, and 2.2% did not know.

Sume 71.4% of the PRM members felt that the nomination convention of this party will be clean, and 14.1% said that there would be some disorder, while 9.3% predicted that it would be fraudulent and 5.2% did not express an opinion.

The PLD leaders

The Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) obtained 44.1% of the voters approval, the PRM received 17.9%, the PRD, 8.8%, the PRSC 2.3%, "none" received 25.3%, "other" received 1.1% and "do not know" received 0.5%.

The survey was held from Friday, 16 January until Sunday, 18 January of this year.

There were 1500 persons of voting age interviewed, with both the households and the persons interviewed selected randomly.

The study has a 95% level of confidence and a sample error of more or less 2.5%.

Danilo is very high

Some 57.7% of the persons interviewed by the Economic Center of the Cibao (CEC) consider the performance of President Danilo Medina and his administration to be good, while 29.5% estimated it to be excellent, 8.7% give it a bad rating, 2.9% terrible and 1.1% did not express their opinion. There were 56.5% who said that the country is going in the right direction, but 39.1% said that it was going along the bad road and 4.3% did not know. There were 25.9% who indicated that crime and lack of security where the principle problem, 22.7% mentioned corruption, 19.7% talked about the high cost of living, 12.2% unemployment, 6.9% drug trafficking, 2.5% blackouts, 1.7% the lack of medicine and 1.7% the lack of schools.

Fernandez and Mejia with highest rejection rate

According to the Economic Center of Cibao (CEC), former President Leonel Fernandez has a 60.1% unfavorable image, a percentage that increased in relation to the 54.4% that he obtained in October 2014.

The president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD, Miguel Vargas improved his unfavorable image from 78.5% to 75.6%.

The image of former President Hipolito Mejia saw his image decrease, since now he obtained 49.2% of an unfavorable opinion and last October he had a 45.3% unfavorable rating. Luis Abinader reached 56.1% favorable image and 26.5% unfavorable. In October he obtained 55% favorable and 26.5 % unfavorable.

When the CEC asked their subjects in the survey for which political leaders they would never vote, 34.5% said Fernandez, 28% mentioned Vargas, 22.9% said Mejia, while only 2.3% said that they would not vote for Abinader. There were 8.3% of those that had an opinion said they would not reject anyone.

Diario Libre