Bermuda’s economic position means the next General Election will likely fall no sooner than the spring 2024, according to statistician Cordell Riley.

Mr Riley predicted that the Progressive Labour Party would lose seats to the One Bermuda Alliance, thanks to a reduced turnout of its supporters — but would retain power.

Mr Riley told The Royal Gazette that the by-election for Smith’s South, in which Ben Smith of the OBA won the seat over Mischa Fubler for the PLP, was “rather inconsequential, as a turnout of less than 50 per cent is rare even for a by-election”.

Although the turnout of 47.6 per cent of registered voters in Smith’s South topped the 43.2 per cent for Pembroke Central in 2019, in 2018 there was 51.6 per cent turnout in Paget East and 53.8 per cent for Warwick North East.

In 2016, the by-election for Devonshire North Central brought out 62.6 per cent of voters. That same year, Warwick South Central’s contest had a 51.9 per cent turnout.

On last week’s lower turnout, Mr Riley said: “That’s because there was literally nothing at stake. The OBA was never expected to lose one of its few remaining safe seats, even if the PLP made inroads.

“And if by some miracle the PLP did win, what could it do with 31 seats that it cannot do with 30?

“So little was at stake that the PLP could have rode this one out, saving the taxpayer some money. However, the need to introduce a new, young, solid candidate, when there are precious few of them, was an opportunity that could not be resisted.”

Mr Riley said the end of the Smith’s South political campaign put the focus on the next General Election.

“Although not due until sometime in 2025, many have believed that one would take place before Christmas.

“Given the continued economic challenges faced by the country, I’m not one of them.

“My guess is that it will not take place until Spring 2024 at the earliest — and the results of the Smith’s South By-Election will have no bearing on its outcome.

“The General Election will likely see the same sentiment that was expressed in the 2012 election, which the OBA won against all odds. However, things are slightly different this time around.

“For starters, the PLP has an excess of seats so losing a few will not change anything. Secondly, the OBA governed true to form during its five-year tenure, with the voters ending that experiment in 2017.

“It is unlikely that the experiment will be repeated at the next election.”

Philip Perinchief, a former attorney-general under the PLP, said the showdown could be summed up with the word “apathy”.

He added that the turnout of less than half of Constituency 8’s eligible voters underscored the need for a rethink of Bermuda’s political order.

“Tell me I’m not the only one who feels this way these days,” said Mr Perinchief, who hold’s master’s degrees in political science as well as political economy and policy, specialising in econometrics, voting systems and electoral reform.

“Politically disenchanted and fundamentally disenfranchised,” was how Mr Perinchief described himself.

Mr Perinchief said of the latest by-election: “So what’s really new?”

Noting the constituency’s history as an OBA-friendly seat, Mr Perinchief said: “That’s the problem. The prevailing and respective party strongholds have become strangleholds around the necks and airways of our democracy.

“Let’s face it, the Bermuda electoral system of first-past-the-post is going to yield fairly much the same results between the two traditional parties in their respective strongholds and confine the rest of us to, often by default, accepting one of two very lacklustre choices, as has been the case for the past few elections.”

Highlighting turnout in Smith’s South, Mr Perinchief said that “we all know that less than half of the eligible voters came out to vote, and that means something”.

OBA voters who did come out “quite expectedly trounced the PLP candidate”.

“They voted the same way they have always voted.”

Mr Perinchief said voter lethargy prevailed across Bermuda’s electorate and questioned why there was “no push by our intellectual and political elite, or by any candidate from any party, to move our electoral system to a more democratic one of an appropriate variation of a proportional representation voting system”.

He said proportional representation, in which parties would be allocated seats in the House of Assembly based on the overall percentage of votes secured, “far more representative of the PLP’s much-vaunted ‘one person, one vote, of equal value’, and for more worthy candidates in or outside of the party system”.

“There is no movement because neither party wants to change the vital demographics of the status quo, period.

“That is why both parties would be, and have traditionally been, resistant to a PR electoral system.”

Mr Perinchief said proportional representation would free up voters to back “non-party” candidates, or to vote independently of party affiliations.

He questioned whether casting a ballot was responsible for a voter dissatisfied by the candidates or with either political party.

“I think not,” he said. “Seems to me that I would be acting responsibly with my vote by not aiding and abetting the stuttering, fluttering, shambolic, low-level political performances I witness on both sides at present by not, in fact, voting at all.

“Let the political chips lie, or fly, where they fall.”

Mr Perinchief asked if a guiding “political phoenix” would rise to take the island into “a brighter, fairer, worthier political system and environment that many of us have been championing for since the 1970s”.

He said that proportional representation, tailored to Bermuda, would offer “a wider choice of candidates with a real chance of winning a seat, regionally and nationally, party and independent, to the electorate to vote for”.

“Such a system can produce an outcome that will usher in a more representative coalition government, reflecting that wider expression of the people’s voting choice,” Mr Perinchief said.

“Then and only then will we push back from, this growing pall of political apathy, slowly but most assuredly descending over our political and social fabric, and landscape, currently.”