An opinion poll commissioned by Nasa and conducted by US pollster John Zogby has found Raila Odinga ahead of Uhuru Kenyatta. This is the first poll to find the Nasa candidate leading.
Zogby is a bit controversial in the US for his methodologies, which include data from internet polls sent to volunteers. Notable pollsters like Nate Silver have argued that this goes against the basic principle of random sampling.
Nevertheless, Zogby has found some successes in his results, case in point 2000 where he predicted a very tight race between George W Bush and Al Gore. In subsequent elections however, his polls were not highly cited.
His poll was conducted between July 8 and 13 in all 47 counties. It finds that Raila is the preferred choice with 47.4% of the votes against Uhuru’s 46.7%.
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5% of Kenyans remain undecided, but most of them (47%) are leaning towards Raila vs 27% who are leaning towards Uhuru. The poll found that all the other 6 candidates will garner 1% of the vote.
Awarding the undecided votes to the two main candidates in the ratio of their leaning will give Raila an outright first round victory according to Zogby. John Zogby released the poll results from the US via teleconferencing at Nairobi’s Serena Hotel.
One person who is not buying into this poll is Thirdway Alliance presidential candidate Dr Ekuru Aukot. Speaking yesterday on K24 Alfajiri, Ekuru dismissed the poll, particularly the part stating that the ‘punda’ candidates will barely get 1%.
“It is now clear that polls in this country cannot be relied upon by anyone. They are paid for by politicians to send a particular message. This is why as a presidential candidate I refused a presidential debate where candidates are classified on the basis of opinion polling because they are biased,” he said.
