07/05/2017
RELIABLE SAMPLE SURVEY RESULTS INFORM OPINION POLLS ACCURATELY
If Sample surveys are well designed and implemented accurately they should provide reliable information about the situation on the ground. This applies to Opinion Polls which are frequently carried out during the time of campaigns for general elections. Hence opinion polls would accurately inform on the political situation in the country, county or constituency. For this to happen, there are various fundamental process and activities that should be undertaken so that reliable data can be obtained and provide robust estimates on the issues of interest, whether socio-economic or political. We provide below some of the opinion poll results we carried out that showed reliably the direction of the voters thinking. This is in the face of recent opinion polls failing to be consistent with results of nominations for gubernatorial positions by some pollsters, which have attracted concerns from the public on issues of accuracy. In this case we wish to emphasize that opinion polls are usually accurate and they should be taken seriously and relied upon for planning and strategizing in political campaigns. However, the surveys must be scientifically and professionally designed so as to give reliable results. It is also important to emphasize that the opinion poll results will hold only if the assumptions under which they were designed hold up to the end of the elections. Any change in the assumptions will result in the results moving in the opposite direction to the results of the election.
ANASTRA in its opinion polls ensures that all the necessary safeguards are taken to avoid errors that would affect the estimates from the sample survey. Consequently, our predictions are usually in the direction of the election outcome. We have provided results from some of the opinion polls we have carried out recently that were very accurate in relation to the outcome of the elections. This includes the results from Kiambu County which was of great interest to ANASTRA as it appeared that there was going to be a serious contest for the seat of governor and hence we felt there was need to carry out an opinion poll in that county to see the direction of the people’s thinking. Our opinion poll in Kiambu was carried out between 24th and 30th December 2016. The results showed that Hon. Ferdinand Waititu was making serious inroads into the county and could easily have overtaken the incumbent. At that time, Hon. Ferdinand Waititu preferred by 37.1% of the voters edged Governor William Kabogo who was then preferred by 34.7% of the voters by 2.4%. The teaming up of Hon. Ferdinand Waititu with James Nyoro (running mate), David Gakuyo, John Mugwe and Aquiline Njoki in an announcement made at Kimende in Lari Constituency appears to have boosted the support to Hon. Ferdinand Waititu by at least 13.2% which was the preference for the four aspirants at the time of our opinion poll in December. Hence Hon. Ferdinand Waititu had an edge of 15.6% over Governor William Kabogo at the time of the nomination. At the same time, we noted that the current senator, Hon. Paul Kimani Wamatangi had a high preference by the voters at 60.0%. Also there was a clear indication by the electorate that they were shifting their support from the current women representative, Nyokabi Gatheca who was preferred by 30.0% of the voters to Gathoni Muchomba who was being supported by 46.7% of the voters. In the nominations, Gathoni Muchomba was voted overwhelmingly to be the candidate on the Jubillee ticket for the women representative seat.
Since there were other candidates still to declare their interest, it is possible that this led to large proportions of undecided responses at 21.4%, 17.9% and 11.0% for the senatorial, women representative and gubernatorial positions, respectively.
If we had conducted another survey close to the nominations, we would have detected the emerging trend.
We also demonstrate how accurate opinion polls can be if carried out well using our results in an Opinion Poll we carried out in Kitui County preceding the 2013 General Election for the results of the gubernatorial seat and parliamentary seats. We estimated in our opinion poll that the leading gubernatorial candidate who at that time was Dr. Julius Makau Malombe would win with 59.9% of the votes cast. In the election, he received 59.8% of the votes cast for the gubernatorial seat in Kitui County (a difference of 0.1% which you may confirm from the IEBC records). The predictions for all the parliamentary candidates were accurate as all the candidates who were predicted to be leading worn the seats in the election.
RESULTS OF THE OPINION POLL IN KIAMBU COUNTY
24-30th DECEMBER 2016
The Sample size was 2000 interviews
RESULTS FROM OPINION POLL IN KITUI 2013
11-16th FEBRUARY 2013
The Sample Size was 2500 interviews
