Despite the fact that
opinion polls are good for indicating who the likely winners or losers in elections
are, they should not be celebrated especially in Kenya. Why do I say so?
Opinion polls are based
on estimates of how many people would vote for a particular political candidate
and sometimes the reasons why they would prefer one candidate than the other.
Although opinion polls
have done well when it comes to measuring the popularity of presidential aspirants,
they have failed dismally on measuring preference of aspirants based on policies.
This reality means the Kenyan voter favors personality politics over issue
based politics.
Don’t be deceived,
opinion polls conducted in Kenya by Infotrak, Synovate and others are based on
popular views on political personalities rather than what those personalities
stand for.
In cases where the
‘preferred person’ has brilliant ideas in his/her manifesto on how to uplift
the welfare of ordinary Kenyans, such ideas are bound not to influence voter decisions
on elections when asked by opinion poll researchers.
It is simple, the
average, most of them are, Kenyan voter will use political personality as the
benchmark regarding answers to questions of whether or not he/she would vote for
such a person which necessarily leads to voting based on tribal arithmetic.
While there is nothing
wrong with Kenyan tribes, since they are part of our cultural historicity, it
is sad to see how voters have been held hostage by radical political tribalism.
This is why the only place where the presidential aspirants’ supporters are ‘jubilated’
of ‘corded’ happen to be their tribal safe-havens.
Yes, aspirants can run
to alters of the latter but they cannot hide. This is perhaps the last
elections where presidents will enjoy majority support from their tribal constituents
considering that they have only done so now because of the many worrying issues
like land, IDP’s etc.
It seems inevitable that
the only persons that would be trusted with the kind of leadership that will
address the thorny land question would be a tribal kinsman akin to Luanda Magere in Luo mythology. The
question is: what will these aspirants dangle in the future when the land
question has been resolved and all IDP’s resettled?
But I am digressing,
the reasons why we should not celebrate opinion polls is because the Kenyan
voter is gullible, unsure of what he/she is voting for, thanks to poor civic
education, probably in the village, and worried about where the next meal will
come from.
Food seems to be a man-made
crisis during elections – it was in 2007. That is why Eugene Wamalwa recently claimed
in one of the rallies in Western that strangers are roaming the village buying
voter ID’s for 1000 shillings. There were also alleged cases of vote buying in Kisii two days before elections. Should we
trust opinions of such voters?
If Synovate, Infotrack
et al do a random sampling of eligible voters nationally (rural and urban), and
conduct a telephone survey, then what are the chances that they could be
speaking to such gullible or Kigeugeu voters?
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