Above: Illustration by rudall30/DepositPhotos

BitDepth#1507 for April 21, 2025

Much of the digital battle  for attention in the upcoming election on April 28 has been focused on social media platforms.

Those spaces are magnets for siloed thinking and heated arguments but do little to expand the conversation beyond providing echo chambers for the committed.

The Elections and Boundaries Commission lists voter turnouts for the 2015 and 2010 elections as part of its record of election participation since 1946.
That year, an average of 69.6 per cent of registered voters showed up at the polls.

Except for the “covid” election, with a turnout of 58 per cent, voter turnout has been at 65 per cent or higher since 1986.

The lowest number of citizens exercising their franchise was 1971, when just 33.3 per cent of citizens voted in a widespread protest over voting machines.

In 1956, 82.4 per cent of the electorate voted and 88 per cent voted in 1961.
The only recent replication of that pattern of enthusiasm came in 1986, when the National Alliance for Reconstruction crushed the PNM 33-3, unseating a sitting PM for the first time. That ultimately didn’t work out well.

The 1956 and 1961 elections were a fight to direct the future of the country after colonial rule, with the majority of the votes spilt between the PNM and the People’s Democratic Party in 1956 and the Democratic Labour Party in 1961.

In 2025, that fight continues between the PNM and the UNC, but there doesn’t seem to be any significant effort to persuade the undecided voter.

TT elections have settled into a pattern of clear electoral support largely defined by geography and underpinned by race-based voter choices.

The voters who have already made up their minds are not the real factor in this year’s general election; it is the 25-30 per cent of eligible voters who haven’t voted for decades.

The profile of that citizen disinterest is likely to be radically different today than it was in 1986.

Some part of that undecided/jaded/disinterested faction is likely to be young and either confused or annoyed by political discourse that is either party-aggrandizing, thin on real world impact and argumentative.

A website on the open internet is an opportunity for a political party to hang its shingle in a space of its own making, defining its character, positions and plans.

Under review are five political parties contesting the election this year; those with the most to lose, the most to gain and the most visible public profile.

The People’s National Movement has allowed its older pnm.live domain security to stagnate. The 2020 election website is now blocked by modern browsers.

Replacing it is votepnm.org, registered in July 2023. The site has good discoverability, showing up fourth on the first page of Google’s listings (sites were searched using “full party name, Trinidad and Tobago”).

The site offers a proper listing of its candidates, with photographs and short biographies.

Text is minimal, and some candidate statements made direct to video have slowly been added during the past week, though as of April 20, less than half include a multimedia element. Only two candidates contesting UNC-held seats include bios with candidate videos.

The party’s manifesto was added to the website on April 16. Voter persuasion points are made via short videos, including one that touts the party’s role in securing the Dragon energy deal.

The PNM site added “Manifesto Minis” over the Easter weekend, shareable excerpts from the party’s manifesto and now offers bullet points of its election promises on the home page. The site is slow to load.

The uncofficial.org domain has lapsed, and the active website of the United National Congress is unctt.org, registered in February 2013. The site is first ranked for the search term and has good SEO.

This is a catch-all site for the party, so it’s disconcerting to find old news and statements on the home page alongside recent speeches and press releases.

But the 2025 election is broken out as an item in the persistent categories bar, so it’s easy to find the candidates’ photos and biographies as well as the party’s “minifestos,” graphic and pithy summaries of its plans for governance.

Over the Easter weekend the UNC pulled down this version of its website, replacing it with a streamlined version focused entirely on the general election.

The new site emphasises the party’s “Everybody wins” voter persuasion points that it is using for web advertisements.

The new candidate biographies are largely incomplete, many with placeholder text and all feature an odd video clip that’s all chyron or news ticker information with no actual content.

These clips are likely to be incomplete and are probably also placeholders for unfinished promotional material.

The National Transformation Alliance has a voter website at ttnta.com, registered in April 2022. The site is ranked first for the search term.

There is a two-minute video statement by its political leader, Gary Griffith on the home page and a downloadable PDF of its manifesto. The site lists the NTA’s candidates and their electoral districts.

The donate button doesn’t work and there are odd sizing issues with graphics added after the addition of its manifesto on April 15. A pitch video with unfortunate AI-powered elements articulates the party’s position.

The Patriotic Front’s website, registered in July 2020, is the slickest of the sites, but it offers little actual information beyond the vaguest of generalities.

The site has poor discoverability and doesn’t appear on the first three pages of search listings. The website was found through the party’s Facebook page.

Beyond photos and electoral districts for 14 of their 37 announced candidates, there is little additional information and nothing, not even a photo, about party political leader Mickela Panday.

The Tobago People’s Party has a ghost website at tobagopeoplesparty.net registered in June 2023. The site is ranked first for the search term.

It’s possible to fill out a form to join the party and view a 2024 public meeting filmed by Tobago Updates.

There are no candidates or executive members listed and no statement on the upcoming general election.