MARATHON

PLP: Ron Pinder

FNM: Earl Deveaux

In 1997, Marathon provided the FNM with their largest margin of victory in the whole country. Yet somehow they lost the seat in 02. What happened? Well, the MP Mr. Allen was upset that he didn’t win the leadership race and sort of dropped out for a while. Eventually, he popped his head up again, but he doesn’t seem to have campaigned much in his seat whereas the PLP had a young and motivated candidate in Mr. Pinder and he stole the seat right out from under Mr. Allen’s nose. It’s very interesting to speculate what might have happened if Mr. Allen had worked his seat a bit harder – a dozen votes could have changed history because had he won, he would have surely been named the Opposition Leader in the house and could probably have used that position to become leader of the FNM and perhaps he’d be the one running for PM now. Moral of the story; never give up.

So what happens this time? Mr. Pinder seems to have been a decent MP, but is that enough to overcome the FNM makeup of this seat? I have a hard time accepting that; the PLP does have a few polling divisions to claim as their own here (#11 in particular) but Marathon went FNM in ’87 when other suburban seats went PLP. I think it will be close, but the FNM has the upper hand

Ranking: LEAN FNM