With particular emphasis on Guyana, it'sits voting history is interwoven directly with that of the ethnic climate of independence. Since Guyana has six different races, with Indo-Guyanese being the largest race and Afro-Guyanese coming in atbeing the second placelargest, the racial spewspat is between the two largest racial groups. Ethnicity is the predominant basis for party identification. Over the years, the leaders of the two largest political parties, the People’s National Congress (PNC), which was ranrun by Forbes Burnham, and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which at the time was ranrun by Bharrat Jagdeo, have been Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese, respectively. The PPP was once Guyana's only mass-based party. In 1955, there was a spiltsplit which resulted in a Jaganite PPP and a Burnhamite PPP. The Burnhamite faction formed the PNC in 1957. This began the ethnic voting patterns. The PPP was rural basedrural-based, and the PNC was urban basedurban-based.
Generation after generation, people of these two ethnicities have only been voting for the political party leader that represents their ethnicity. I found it interesting that when the two main parties were campaigning, the political leader of the APNU, who is Afro-Guyanese, made it clear that he wished to be the president for all Guyanese both Indian and African, but yet the PPP won the majority of Indo-Guyanesethe Indo-Guyanese vote.