THERE is a sharp contradiction
between the country’s two leading opinion pollsters over who between
President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition chief Raila Odinga will emerge
winner on August 8.
Leading opinion poll firms Ipsos and Infotrak
yesterday gave conflicting figures on Uhuru and Raila’s approval
ratings in two separate polls conducted over almost the same period and
in 47 and 31 counties, respectively.
The variance comes barely 14 days before Kenyans go to the ballot to vote in their leaders.
Ipsos
yesterday put President Uhuru Kenyatta ahead with 47 percent against
Raila’s 43 percent, with five percent of the voters not yet decided on
who they will vote for next month. This poll had a 2.09 per cent margin
of error.
Only hours after Ipsos released its findings, Infotrak
also released its presidential popularity report, giving Raila a
razor-thin margin of 47 per cent against Uhuru’s 46 per cent, with six
per cent of voters still undecided.
This poll had a margin of error of 2.19 per cent and a 95 per cent confidence level.
The
two polls do not give either of the presidential candidates a straight
win in the first round, but indicate that whoever is able to sway the
undecided voters could carry the day in round one.
Both polls
cited Western Kenya as leading in the number of undecided voters.
Western is however considered a NASA stronghold if the voting trends of
2013 are maintained.
Ipsos Research analyst Tom Wolf said the
five per cent undecided translate to 980,000 voters, and 14 per cent
come from Western, followed by Eastern and Nyanza at six per cent each.
Coast’s
undecided is at five per cent of the total of the unsure. Rift Valley
forms four per cent, Nairobi three per cent and Central one per cent in
the Ipsos survey.
From the Infotrak survey, the bulk of its
1,176,000 who are yet to decide on a presidential candidate come from
Western, at 17.8 per cent, followed by Nairobi at 9.5 per cent and
Eastern coming third at 6.9 per cent.
Northeastern, Nyanza and Coast followed with 4.6, 3.8 and 3.6 per cent, respectively.
Apart
from Western, Nyanza and Coast, which are opposition zones, Nairobi’s
undecided population can go either way, and will depend on the strategy
the two frontrunners employ to tap on the crucial hanging votes.
Eastern is also unpredictable, and neither of the two candidates can lay claim to the undecided population.
Upper Eastern is under the tight grip of Uhuru’s Jubilee Party, while the Lower part, and mainly Ukambani, is a NASA bedrock.
“The
election can be won on the first round by whoever will convince the
undecided voters on his side,” said Infotrak CEO Angela Ambitho.
Last
week, Radio Africa Group released a poll indicating Raila closing a gap
with President Uhuru, but neither of them had enough numbers to avoid a
runoff.
The survey shows that Uhuru would lead the presidential
race by 49 per cent against Raila’s 44 per cent, with seven per cent of
Kenyans still remaining undecided.
Also last week, NASA’s own opinion poll, conducted by
international US pollster John Zogby, indicated Raila will defeat
President Uhuru in the race for State House with only one per cent
separating the two politicians.
The poll, released via
teleconferencing at a Nairobi hotel, had Uhuru scoring 46.7 per cent
while Raila will win with 47.4 per cent of the 19.6 million votes.
Both
Wolf and Ambitho’s research findings also presented two parallel sets
of figures on which political formation between Jubilee and NASA is more
popular amongst the country’s voting population.
Ipsos said Uhuru’s Jubilee Party is more popular with Kenyans at 44 per cent than Raila’s NASA, which had 42 per cent.
Ipsos also indicated that five per cent of Kenyans are undecided on which political outfit to align to 14 days to the election.
Infotrak on the hand indicated that both NASA and Jubilee have tied up at 50 per cent on party popularities.
Infotrak also had eight per cent of the 19.6 million registered voters not yet decided on which party to belong to.
The two pollsters also had conspicuous contradictions on Kenyans’ take on the direction of the national economy.
Ambitho’s
findings put at 49 per cent those who are not happy with the direction
the country has taken, two per cent above the 47 per cent of those who
said the country is headed in the right direction.
Ipsos’s survey
had a whopping 61 per cent of Kenyans saying the country is headed in
the wrong direction, with a paltry 27 per cent happy with the way the
country is run.
In both cases, the majority of those who were
unhappy with the direction the country had taken cited the high cost of
living, rampant corruption and poor leadership for their reasons.
Those
who are happy with the way the country is being run unanimously pointed
at the ambitious infrastructural development undertaken by the Jubilee
administration across the country.
The Ipsos poll also presented
almost a neck-and-neck between Uhuru and Raila on the confidence levels.
Uhuru had a 40 per cent confidence level from Kenyans, narrowly beating
Raila, who attracted 39 per cent confidence.
Interestingly, Raila attracted more no-confidence votes at 34 per cent above President Uhuru’s 28 per cent.
On
the leading running mates, Kalonzo Musyoka narrowly beat Deputy
President William Ruto in the confidence levels, polling 34 per cent
against the DP’s 33 per cent.
Ruto at the same time suffered a
higher no-confidence vote from the Kenyans interviewed, with 40 per cent
expressing they have no-confidence at all in the DP
Kalonzo recorded a 35 per cent no-confidence vote, five per cent less than Ruto’s.
Ipsos’s
fieldwork was done between July 3-12 across the 47 counties, while
Infotrak collected its data from July 16-22 across 31 counties.
