The game changer for the leading coalitions is voter turnout
By Kenya Today
There has been uproar about the recent projection of numbers made by Mutahi Ngunyi which gave Jubilee Alliance an advantage over CORD Coalition. For the first time, Ngunyi was dismissed by the public especially on social media. It is an open secret that any political contest can only be won on numbers. A group of political scientists and social research experts took a critical look at the Ngunyi analysis taking into account the emerging developments from the battle front areas all over the country. Here are the numbers tagged “Tyranny Of Numbers 2.0” Let’s look at this numbers from various regions:
It’s regrettable that majority of the electorate will vote along tribal lines. Jubilee Alliance’s Uhuru Kenyatta support base is in the former provinces of central, Rift Valley, part of Nairobi and of part-Eastern. From face value, if Jubilee can keep intact these regions and presume 85% support then a win in the first round will be imminent, however a deeper scratch into the numbers complicates the puzzle.
To ring the alarm bell for Jubilee, let’s take a look at the supposed Jubilee strongholds of Rift Valley, Eastern and Nairobi provinces (former provinces- scrapped under the new constitution but the territories are intact); Central is purely uncontested for Jubilee just like Nyanza is for CORD. We start with Rift Valley the home ground of William Ruto, running mate to Jubilee Alliance’s Uhuru Kenyatta. The reality on the ground is that majority of the Kalenjin will vote as per Ruto’s wishes while majority of the cosmopolitan areas will vote a long ethnic lines and a minority will take account of national interests.
1. Rift Valley Region: The core Kalenjin Counties
The total of 1,104,598 from the core Kalenjin Counties can be assigned to Jubilee since William Ruto commands the region save for a significant minority of Tea Plantation workers in Kericho, Bomet and Nandi compromising mainly Gusii and Luo tribes. Gideon Mois’s KANU in an alliance with Mudavadi may chip out an insignificant minority to do spoils.
2. The non Kalenjin Rift Valley:
The above Counties do not have a clear favorite; Jubilee cannot confidently claim more than 60% command and here is why; The Maasai who reside in Narok and Kajiado are largely pro CORD courtesy of Hon Ntimama and Rtd General Nkaisery, the Mau eviction and the perceived historical land injustices are the major hindrance not to support Jubilee. Samburu and West Pokot Counties might be a 50% scoop for both CORD and Jubilee. Trans Nzoia is purely cosmopolitan with Luhya, Kikiyu, Kisii and kalenjin farmers’ residing in the area with the natives Sabaot giving neither CORD nor Jubilee an edge.
Nakuru is more cosmopolitan and if you scan the register of Nakuru County, Gusii, Luhya, Akamba and Luo hit at 258,624 voters that give Jubilee a lead of that can be of maximum 60%.
From the foregoing break down of Rift Valley, Jubilee Alliance cannot brag to command the region beyond 60%. Half of its votes are for split!
If the split especially due to the cosmopolitan nature of some parts, the Maasai, Turkana, Samburu gives Raila between 800,000 – 1million votes from Rift Valley, that will be a nightmare for Jubilee and may be a game changer! With Maasai, Samburu and Turkana intact add the Diaspora Luyha, Kisii and other communities forming the cosmopolitan the math may just add up for Raila and NOT for Jubilee. A few weeks ago CORD signed a MoU with Kalenjin elders, farmers and professionals; this may also give Raila some numbers albeit insignificant.
Raila’s schemes and political antics will be at play, he can cut through these numbers which is practically possible. Jubilee may have the numbers in Rift Valley but NOT a clear majority and this makes the math of numbers COMPLICATED for Jubilee in RIFT VALLEY
2. Nairobi Region
Nairobi has a total 1,778,903 IEBC registered voters. Since elections will be held in March, the IEBC calendar has forced the village voters to vote from the city as they won’t be travelling home for Christmas holidays as they used. This explains why voter registration turnout was 138% in Nairobi. As per Register scan Luo, Luhya, Kamba and Gusii who are CORD inclined tally to 1,192,037 if they will be faithful to their ethnic spirit like their village counterparts then they are likely to vote for CORD and an insignificant minority to vote for Amani. We only hope that Jubilee team is aware of this variance in numbers. There is no doubt CORD’s Raila Odinga will emerge a winner in NAIROBI by at least 1M votes assuming >95% voter turnout
3. Eastern Region
Eastern can be split into two regions; the upper Eastern region has historically been voting together with Central under the GEMA banner and is expected to do so this time round. However the lower Eastern compromising mainly the Kamba will most likely vote for CORD? Charity Ngilu is a light weight, with no significant position in Jubilee alliance she has nothing sway the Kamba vote to Jubilee, this time she is a paper tiger! Let me sample the numbers from all the counties in EASTERN.
Lower Eastern comprising mainly Akamba with registered votes of 1,069,529 can be said to be under the wraps of CORD.
Isiolo and Marsabit might be an equal share or a slight win for CORD. Meru, Tharaka and Embu are solidly in Jubilee HOWEVER the recent inroads by Raila to Meru and the ban of Mira export to Netherlands where Raila is perceived to be better placed to negotiate with European union than Uhuru who is leaning towards China, North Korea, Iran, Syria and rest of Africa where Mira got no market, this may give Raila some votes though insignificant.
With the mistreatment of Kiraitu Murungi and subsequent Mbus take off, Jubilee is vulnerable in Meru, they can win BUT CORD may get a significant minority. Mutahi Ngunyi’s numbers will only be true had Jubilee got absolute control of Eastern, Nairobi and Rift Valley.
CORD is expected to lead with big margins at the Coast, Lower Eastern, Western, North Eastern and Nyanza as opposed to Jubilee’s lead in Rift Valley and Central Provinces. As shown above Raila is likely to get 1 Million votes in Rift valley mainly from the Maasai, Turkana, Samburu and Cosmopolitan or CORD aligned immigrant communities of Gusii, Luyha, Luo and Kamba. This may enable Raila Odinga to win round one and this is practically and politically possible. If RAILA won’t win round one, he will definitely win the run off on the basis that:
-The Hague/ICC related complications
– Senior Jubilee stalwarts like Prof. Ongeri, Balala, Mwakwele and Ngilu would fail to win their senate races; they will be in shock and embarrassed to come out and campaign for Jubilee in their respective home turfs. With all the fringe Presidential candidates out of national limelight, Jubilee will be confirmed a two tribe outfit hence will be rejected by majority of Kenyans. And this is without mention of SANCTIONS!
The game changer for the leading coalitions is the voter turnout; let all Kenyans go out and vote wisely and wait March 4th to confirm this analysis.
About the Author
Nairobi Prov. Reg Voters- 1,778,908 Jubilee-700,908 Cord- 900,000
Central Prov. Reg Voters- 2,190,477 Jubilee- 1,900,000 Cord- 200,000
R/Valley Prov. Reg Voters- 3,373,853 Jubilee-1,600,853 Cord-1,200,000
Western Prov. Reg Voters- 1,434,987 Jubilee-134,000 Cord-900,000
Eastern Prov. Reg Voters- 2,092,883 Jubilee- 400,000 Cord- 1,500,000
N/Eastern Prov. Reg Voters- 347,457 Jubilee-80,000 Cord-250,000
Nyanza Prov. Reg Voters-1,954, 756 Jubilee-100,000 Cord-1,800,000
Coast Prov. Reg Voters-1,164,083 Jubilee-300,000 Cord-700,000
Total Reg. Voters-14,334,404 Jubilee-5,215,761 Cord-7,450,000
Percentage Reg. Voters- 100% Jubilee-36% Cord-52%
Now beautiful Kenyans sieve through these numbers and know where to cast your vote. Those who are bent to skew the outcome to their favor by employing government projects, shauri yao. We do not want a repeat of 2007/2008. Kenyans are informed and we know the support base of all the parties and alliances. Besides Cord has a total of 28 stronghold counties while Jubilee has 19. How Jubilee will get the six million as purported I still remain to see. God bless Kenya.
The figures are as reflected in the IEBC Registered Voters Register.
EXPOSED!! MIGUNA MIGUNA loves WOMEN with big A**ES … REVEALS former LOVER
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 – Yesterday former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s political spinner, Miguna Miguna was involved in a scandal involving him and his house help. Allegedly his house help had reported him of attempted rape and even beaten her up.
Miguna later on released a statement indicating that he had beaten up the girl after she attempted to poison him and he blames Raila Odinga for the incident as the girl may have been used by the Premier to try and kill him.
Well today, a woman has emerged and exposed Miguna’s dirty linen in public; apparently Miguna has a taste for bootylicious women and treats his wife like a slave.
Read the expose below courtesy of Nairobi Exposed:
But l know him weve worked 2gether closely am not exposing him but just know his wiaf has no say he treats his wiaf like a slave dats a man whom cn even fcuk a chic on his bed n tell his wiaf2 sleep in another bedroom! He loves women alot especially wale wamebeba he cnt stomach it!He kept pestering me4 my number everyday he came2 ua work plc!But l used2 hide 4rm him da 1st tym l refused2 give him wat he wanted in my number was definately not luv but s*x n since he had a fam y should he take my number he gave up but u could see da urge of his eyes telling u “dat day l will lay u ahem”anywayhe is naturally a womanizer even da wiaf he has is a 2nd wiaf!
NE
hehe he saw ya big bossom akaona hapa ndipo
wewe u dont need to be keeping ds stuff you just have a scandal u bring then i do the rest
lmfao hawes make
NE
so u mean there are cases he has taken clandes to his haouse n do them even if the wife knows bout it huh
no am not sure about cases but he is damn arrogant
he is capable of coz l know his attitude
NE
so he is hypocrite when he accuses raila in his book to be a drankard and womanizer much huh
lmfao havent read da book aki admin we wacha zako
NE
well im telling you all that coz its what ive read from the book’s excerpt. does he drink too? women weve confirmed he loves big assed lol
drinking aint sure cz lve never been on a social spree wid him but l waz dealing wid him job wise nothing beyond job but l guess a womanizer will alwayz be known nomatter how smart he may seem infront of da cameras, no he was a client at my place of work yeah he has 3kids(galz) 2 twins Anyango age 10, Sure age 10 n Acheing age 8
NE
with the same wife ama a different one
xame wiaf(2nd wiaf) but 1st wiaf no1 knows here wea abouts but guess da 1st wiaf had grownup kids
sorry l meant her not here abouts
Be the judge!
The Kenyan DAILY POST
Ruto hatched plot to grab 100-acre land, court told
A judge was on Tuesday told that Mr William Ruto met two people in his office and hatched a plot to grab land belonging to a post-election violence victim.
Mr Gilbert Adrian Muteshi alleges that Mr Ruto grabbed his 100-acre farm in Eldoret North after he fled the 2008 post-election violence.
His lawyer, Mr Anthony Lubulellah, said that Mr Ruto, who was Agriculture minister, paid the two Sh600,000 to execute the plan.
The lawyer was cross-examining Mr Ruto’s witness, Mr Hosea Ruto, who said he and the politician were childhood friends.
Mr Lubulellah said Mr Ruto met Mr Bethuel Kipsang and Mr Peter Kosgey and agreed on the deal.
“I put it to you that a plot was hatched to deprive the plaintiff of his land at this meeting,” Mr Lubulellah told the witness.
He accused the witness of being the “engine” of the alleged fraud. “A scheme was hatched by you and your namesake, Mr William Ruto, to grab the plaintiff’s land in Tapsagoi,” he said.
The witness admitted he was Mr Ruto’s agent in the deal but said his job was to find the landowner and introduce him to Mr Ruto.
He said he established that the owners of the land were a Mr Kiptugen, the husband of Dorothy Yator, a Mr Bethuel Kipsang and Mr Peter Kosgey. He said he did not conduct an official search but was shown six titles in the name of Dorothy Yator.
The men who came to Mr Ruto’s office introduced themselves as agents of the title holder, he said.
Mr Lubulellah, however, said there was neither evidence of a sale agreement, Land Control Board consent nor payment of the purchase price.
He also questioned Mr Ruto’s decision not to appear as a witness in a case where he is first defendant.
The witness denied all this, saying he knew a sale agreement had been drawn up and the Sh600,000 was the last instalment of the payment for the land.
The hearing resumes on Monday.
Mutahi Ngunyi’s theory considered ‘mental laziness’
20 February 2013, 19:30
Wangui Joseph
Political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi’s tyranny of numbers theory has received critique from his counterpart Professor Peter Kagwanja who considers the concept mere ‘mental laziness’.
Kagwanja said Mutahi’s argument cannot work and is not viable claiming that voters must be ready for a run off in the presidential election.
According to Mutahi, Jubilee coalition will win in the first round with a landslide.
He was basing his argument on Kenyans’ voting tradition where they support a candidate on basis of tribe, ethnicity and region saying that since Uhuru and Ruto are members of major tribes in the country, that guarantees them victory.
More so, their tribes (Kikuyu and Kalenjin) registered overwhelmingly in the recent exercise of voter registration.
However, he said voter registration turn out was not much impressive in Nyanza; considering it is Raila’s back yard and his running mate’s background, there will be a swing vote not a block.
Conversely, Kagwanja argued that there is no justifying reason to argue that all Mount Kenya region people will vote for Uhuru considering that the region has two other presidential candidates and they too have their share.
On the other hand, he asserted that not every Luo will vote for Raila or CORD coalition.
Mutahi had argued that Jubilee coalition won elections in December last year immediately the voter registration exercise was completed.
Basing his argument on voter registration statistics, Mutahi put Uhuru ahead of his closest rival Raila Odinga assuming that voting will be based on ethnic lines.
He however put Amani Coalition led by Musalia Mudavadi at position three with a total vote of about 1.7Million assuming that Luhyas will vote as a block.
The two analysts nevertheless agree that Amani coalition will be the determining factor in case of a run off.
“In such an instance, Jubilee has to befriend Mudavadi in all ways either not forgetting that they irritably parted ways after Uhuru failed to fulfill his promise to Mudavadi,” said Kagwanja.
He added that in any chance, Amani coalition might split during run off when its members may take their preferred sides, either Jubilee or Cord.
Kagwanja further argued that opinion polls are releasing information contrary to his observations and beliefs as a professional.
“To me, Jubilee will win in the first round though it will not attain the required 50 plus one per cent of the total vote cast,” said the professor.
Both coalitions are composed of two major tribes in the country thus building more trust and confidence to their internal sources, according to Kagwanja.
HOW BIG IS RAILA ODINGA’S LEAD?
..
Saturday, February 23, 2013 – 00:00 — BY SARAH ELDERKIN
Five years ago, as the 2007 election approached, something strange began to happen in the opinion polls conducted by several local polling firms.
A year earlier, on December 23, 2006, a public opinion poll conducted by the then Steadman Group had put Kibaki in the lead in popularity in all provinces except Nyanza.
Overall, he had a 42 per cent approval rating, with Musyoka in second position at 20 per cent and Raila Odinga in third place with 14 per cent.
Over the succeeding year, this picture changed gradually but very decisively, always in the same direction – Kibaki and Musyoka gradually losing support, Odinga gradually gaining.
In September 2007, when Steadman announced the results for its latest monthly poll, Odinga had finally taken the lead, with 47 per cent to Kibaki’s 38 per cent and Musyoka’s eight per cent.
Government supporters now came out to criticise the polls – something they had not done when Kibaki was leading. “Even if Raila is leading, we are not worried,” said roads minister Simeon Nyachae.
“Steadman is a businessman and he is just making money.” Weekly polls by three pollsters were then commissioned by the Daily Nation.
The first results, published simultaneously the following week, on October 7, put Odinga at 46, 46, and 49.6 per cent, with Kibaki at 35, 41 and 39.6 per cent respectively.
(As an interesting aside, Kanu, the monolithic monster people had fought so hard to tame for so many decades, now trailed in the polls with a tiny one per cent rating. It was a situation that would have been unimaginable less than 10 years earlier.)\
The next Steadman poll, published on October 13, just after Kibaki’s launch of his presidential campaign, gave Odinga a 53 per cent approval rating to Kibaki’s 37 and Musyoka’s eight.
PNU was quick to dismiss the poll as “sheer propaganda”, accusing Steadman of working for ODM and the US government. Polls by Infotrak Harris and Strategic Research confirmed Odinga’s widening lead.
Only a poll by the little-known Consumer Insight seemed out of sync with the others, giving Odinga 44 per cent to Kibaki’s 41. It was the beginning.
Another round of polls published on November 4 showed Odinga leading 50 to Kibaki’s 35 (Strategic), and 51.3 to Kibaki’s 32.2 (Infotrak Harris).
Once again, Consumer Insight was out of sync with the others, at 41 per cent for Odinga and 40.6 per cent for Kibaki. The degree of its variation from the other polls began to raise questions.
The next Infotrak Harris poll a week later gave Odinga 50.2 per cent to Kibaki’s 31.8 per cent. But the Steadman poll conducted at the same time showed a narrowing of the gap – 45 per cent for Odinga and 41 per cent for Kibaki, with Musyoka up to 11 per cent.
Six days later, a Consumer Insight poll gave Odinga 40.7 per cent to Kibaki’s 41.4. It was the first time in eight weeks that any poll had rated Kibaki higher than Odinga.
By the following week, all the polls showed a marked narrowing of the gap between Kibaki and Odinga, at (Odinga figures first) 43.2/38.4 (Strategic), 39.5/40.4 (Consumer Insight), and 43.9/ 38.4 (Infrotrak Harris).
On December 7, Infotrak Harris published the results of a poll that showed 52 per cent of voters thought the election results would be rigged.
They were right. There was no reason why Kibaki’s stock should have risen so suddenly. Nothing had happened to make Kenyans spontaneously grow more in favour of Kibaki by a significant percentage.
Ratings do not change just like that, for no good reason. In the same way this year, 2013, there is no reason why Uhuru Kenyatta’s stock should suddenly have risen the way it has.
Nothing has changed. Kenyatta is still an ICC indictee (not a suspect, but an indictee, someone against whom what judges consider credible evidence has been laid, which is much more serious).
Of course, it is well-known that Kenyatta is pouring billions into his campaign – the kind of billions that no other candidate can come close to matching.
Less well-known to most people is that a prominent Kenyan (I have withheld his name) has privately admitted being the conduit for large sums of money that were paid to pollsters in 2007 to raise Kibaki’s profile.
This year, it would appear that there is a much more complex plot afoot, and we are seeing just the tip of this particular iceberg. Let us begin with purpoted political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi’s so-called analysis of purported voting patterns a few weeks ago, which skewed figures massively in favour of Kenyatta and for a few days caused a sensation – as well as alarm and despondency in some quarters.
That was what it was supposed to do, and it was a good piece of propaganda – you have to give Ngunyi that. It fitted seamlessly with William Ruto’s repeated assertion after the launch of Jubilee’s manifesto that “We have the numbers.”
In fact, this was virtually all Ruto had to say to every newscaster who interviewed him at KICC on that day. There was nothing like, “We have the policies” or “We have the programmes”.
No. Just – jubilantly – “We have the numbers.” It sounded alarm bells. Especially because Jubilee does not have the numbers. Ngunyi’s purported analysis of the numbers was itself analysed at length by this newspaper in last week’s Siasa section, which asked, ‘Was Ngunyi’s purported analysis just a hoax?’
I believe it was. Ngunyi’s half-baked figures and selective data do not stand up to scrutiny. Most notably, he completely ignored all the regions of the country where the coming election will be won and lost.
For me, it continues to be astonishing that TV stations and others persist in putting Ngunyi in the spotlight as some kind of ‘expert’ – when all his predictions as far as I can remember have been spectacularly wrong.
His services as a columnist, making very wild and garbled assertions, have also twice been discontinued at another newspaper (whether by him or by the newspaper I don’t know).
The articles he wrote were characterised by a variety of analogies through which Ngunyi attempted to explain what he purported to present as the vice in the country – the articles themselves finally metamorphosing into incomprehensible nonsense.
Ngunyi in fact has a very chequered history. Just before the 2007 elections, when Ngunyi was working for President Mwai Kibaki, he was named as the author of a report entitled ‘Anglo Leasing: Some Thoughts’, a brutal document advising the president to criminalise whistleblower John Githongo’s release of the dossier on the huge Anglo-Leasing corruption scandal.
The aim was clearly to silence Githongo and to wipe details of the scam from Kenyan collective memory, as well as to ensure there was no Anglo-Leasing-related loss of votes for Kibaki.
Ngunyi denied being the author of the document, as reported in the Standard newspaper of January 28th 2006, but suspicions persisted.
The document’s author had demanded shs.2.2 million for consultancy services to counter Githongo’s damaging information. Ngunyi had reasons for revenge on Githongo.
In 2001, Ngunyi was sued for allegedly embezzling more than shs.10 million shillings, awarded some time in the 1990s by the Ford Foundation to an NGO called Series on Alternative Research in East Africa Trust (Sareat), of which Ngunyi was a director.
Ngunyi was sued alongside Zimbabwean minister Professor Jonathan Moyo, who was working as a Ford Foundation programme officer at the time the money allegedly disappeared.
Moyo is also a purported political scientist – one who switched from being a sharp critic of President Robert Mugabe’s government to being his chief propagandist and, according to various Zimbabwean publications, was a major player in Zimbabwe’s crackdown on journalists, the judiciary and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of (now prime minister) Morgan Tsvangirai.
There are many guns for hire in Zimbabwe. Kenya is no different. In 1998, Ngunyi’s NGO had engaged Githongo to edit a regional political economy magazine called East African Alternatives.
According to reports, the magazine folded after four issues, and its closure was as a result of audit queries made by PriceWaterhouseCooper.
This led to the suit against Ngunyi by the Ford Foundation. And the Foundation’s star witness for the prosecution was to be none other than John Githongo.
The case was apparently later withdrawn, after Sareat agreed to repay the funds in question – but not before Ngunyi had written to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asking them to probe alleged forgery of documents and money laundering at the Ford Foundation’s East Africa and New York offices.
In another strange twist of events, Ngunyi also reportedly turned turtle and offered to act as a prosecution witness against Moyo. In the document ‘Anglo Leasing: Some Thoughts’, the author recommended that Githongo be repatriated from Britain, where he had sought asylum after releasing the Anglo-Leasing dossier, and that he be charged with high treason.
“Githongo has arrogated himself a high moral ground,” the document told Kibaki. “He is telling the world that ‘you are bad and he is good’. You need to deflate him. You need to cast him as an over-enthusiastic officer with good intentions but completely naive.
But more fundamentally, you must criminalise what he is doing.” The author warned that, without this kind of action, the government in the court of public opinion was “guilty as charged”.
The author continued, “The President is implicated directly or otherwise as per the Githongo dossier. This is why we must interpret public anger as a indirect assault on the President, not the implicated ministers… we must not attempt to resolve this scam, not before the 2007 elections.”
The document also advised the government to release the Goldenberg report in a “mirror image tactic” that would “infuriate and confuse”, and recommended that the government must not fire or suspend any implicated politicians.
“They form a ring around the president,” the document continued. “To remove them is to expose Kibaki. They must therefore remain in place and take the blame while inside.
If you remove them, the public will inevitably go for the president, demanding his resignation as well.” In his ‘tyranny of numbers’ scenario a few weeks back, Ngunyi served up several “estimates” of Kenyan voter numbers, but provided no coherent logic or calculations to justify these numbers, making wild assertions arrived at by no known polling methodology.
And that brings us to the current opinion polls and their methodologies and curious anomalies. All the pollsters in the last poll published indicated that they did face-to-face interviews using a digital pad.
While a digital pad is convenient for the researcher, a process audit would find it hard to unearth instances where individual questionnaire entries had been altered.
A hard-copy questionnaire lends itself well to such an interrogation process. Another concern regarding face-to-face interviews is the place of interview.
The pollsters claimed to have done interviews at households between February 13 and 15 – Wednesday to Friday, all working days. Who would have been interviewed in these houses? Househelps?
Househelps have their valid opinions too, but such an information-gathering approach totally obviates the participation of those of working age,18 years and above, who happen to be the main body of voters and thus should be the target respondents for this kind of poll.
Household face-to-face interviews would be appropriate for household consumer market research (Do you use Harpic? Omo?) but definitely not for this kind of political opinion polling.
A house-based poll also works against the main benefits of the random process. If the pollster knows your house, it means your stated political opinion can be traced back to you.
Since your political opinion can get you killed, evicted or isolated, imagine how a respondent in Bondo would feel about publicly professing support for Kenyatta, or one in Gatundu doing the same for Odinga.
A true random process leaves a respondent anonymous, while giving them an equal chance to participate. The process reportedly being used is not random.
More worrying is that, according to evidence leaking out of polling houses, and contrary to reports made to the public, there were actually no house-based face-to-face interviews.
Pollsters have instead reportedly been conducting phone interviews based on a frame of registered mobile-phone users. While this is convenient and significantly cheaper, it is scientifically lacking in the necessary discipline.
The sampling frame for political polling must be the national voters’ register. A database of mobile-phone users does not reveal such crucial demographics as the age of the respondent (to qualify them to vote), whether they are registered voters or in which voter region the phone-user resides.
Sample size distribution is done by regions – yet you cannot verify the regional location of a respondent in a mobile-phone interview. They could be anywhere.
In addition, mobile-phone accessibility in rural areas, where more than 60 per cent of registered voters reside, is unreliable at best, absent at worst.
And crucial is the fact that, not unlike house-based interviews, phone interviews do not support the random process. Even more worrying is the fact that any such non-random process is fraught with potential abuse.
Any pollster with a mind to do so can buy 1,000 mobile lines and distribute them to that number of persons, who then participate in the phone interviews.
There is no proof with this kind of non-random polling that this is not happening, and largely influencing responses. There are many other questions regarding sampling.
Opinion polling is about measuring differences, and thus analysis and presentation focus on measures of dispersion –variance, range and percentile.
For this reason, concern is about factors that occasion difference in opinion. Such factors include age, gender, social class, education level and region.
The first four cannot be determined before the poll and are usually allowed to emerge naturally through the random process, but the overall required sampling frame is the national voter register, and the sample size distribution is according to the weight for each electoral area.
In the poll results released on February 18, pollsters Ipsos Synovate, Strategic and Infotrak claim to have employed the appropriate sampling factors, but the published results raise more questions than answers.
There was no firm attempt to distribute the sample on the basis of counties, the largest electoral boundary. Strategic gave a list of 32 out of the 47 counties where their research was allegedly conducted but not how the sample was distributed to those counties.
No intra-county sample size distribution is discussed by any of the pollsters. Nairobi, Rift Valley, Western and Central are significantly over-sampled by Strategic Africa, while Rift Valley and North Eastern are significantly under-sampled.
A closer look into the counties they reached reveals a significant bias towards Nyanza, Central, Western, Lower Eastern and North / Central Rift. The pollsters’ rationale is that they focused on the top 30 or so counties in terms of registered voters.
But the 32 counties sampled by Strategic Africa account for only 33.3 per cent of the registered voters. The other two pollsters’ samples also average less than 35 per cent.
The implication is that the rest of the counties that are allegedly insignificant account for nearly 65 per cent of the registered voters! The sampling distribution is clearly not representative.
This is of particular importance considering that this significant ‘minority’ (actually, not the minority but the majority, and also the same persons who were ignored by Ngunyi in his lamentably inadequate – read deliberately abstruse and misleading – ‘analysis’) will form the deciding vote.
The counties sampled are traditional strongholds of the two main presidential candidates and tend to cancel each other out in terms of registered voters, thus explaining the ‘tie’ purportedly captured by the pollsters.
Surely, any pollster worth his or her salt who professed to have polled a ‘tie’ at 45 per cent – to which a candidate needs to add only six per cent to win – would consider a constituency of 65 per cent somewhat significant!
The numbers presented in the analysis tables thus appear to reveal a deficient weighting system. It gives a false picture. Ruto does not have the numbers he thinks he has.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, overall, these polls are conducted to a methodological and presentation design aimed at confirming an ‘election too close to call’, which would justify demand for a run-off, or a particular desired result – to be achieved by hook or by crook. Shades of 2007.
Altogether, the methodology and resulting figures appear to make nonsense of the polls being bandied about, regardless of who might seem to be in the lead. The potential difference, however, appears to be largely in Odinga’s favour.
The writer is a freelance journalist.
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KSB: George, your message has been deleted because it falls under “hate speech”. KSB is trying to preach peace in Kenya and yet you are calling people mercenaries, guns for hire etc. Comment responsibly and have some respect for fellow Kenyans. Don’t incite Wakikuyu against the Luo people or vice versa. Raila’s votes came from Coast, Western, Nyanza, Eastern provinces. Mutahi Ngunyi, whose name you use to try incite people, only gave Raila votes in Nyanza and Eastern so he was dead wrong. Kajwang has just mentioned in his FB entry that over 700,000 votes were pumped into Uhuru’s tally to help him winn so tyrany of numbers is as dead as a dodo. Kenya belongs to us all and we want to live together. Regards, mungu akubariki and keep the peace.