FINAL PREDICTIONS on Kenya Elections 2017 – Raila 5O.75%, Uhuru 48.03%

This article first appeared at Kachwanya.com.

In the course of this electioneering period, we at KachTech Media (owners of Kachwanya.com and Chetenet.com) have made three predictions in regards to Kenya Elections 2017. The first prediction was done by Kennedy Kachwanya in the article Talking Numbers -Jubilee 70%+1 Vs NASA 10 Million Strong, then Odipo Riaga made a follow up prediction in the article NASA Numbers vs Jubilee Numbers Part 2: Who’s gonna win? #PresidentialDebateKE. Finally Odipo Riaga made his last prediction in an article that was published in Chetenet.com. Having done those predictions, Kennedy Kachwanya and Odipo Riaga joined forces to make one final prediction as published in this article.

METHODOLOGY

As opposed to Mutahi Ngunyi of the 5th Estate and Amatsimbi Misigo  of  The Standard who have both predicted Uhuru’s win based on estimating the tribal numbers in the voters’ register, we at KachTech Media took time to keenly look at the voters’ register per county, and used the information gathered to predict the most realistic performance the two leading candidates can have in the Kenya Elections 2017. We were specifically guided by the following:

1. 2013 voting patterns and turnout
2. Opinion polls
3. General moods in the campaigns when the two leading parties visited specific counties.

Having the above tools at hand, Kennedy Kachwanya and Odipo Riaga independently modelled two scenarios each, with scenario one focusing on the best possible outcome for Uhuru Kenyatta and scenario two focusing on the best possible outcome for Raila Odinga.

Those two scenarios provided us with four data sets –  two files for the best possible and realistic outcome for Uhuru Kenyatta and two files for the best possible and realistic outcome for Raila Odinga. We then averaged the four data sets to arrive at the findings discussed in this article.

Digging into the methodology

The first thing we did was to approximate the turnouts per county based on the 2013 turnout with the assumptions that the KIEMS and data transmission will work 100% of the time, and assuming NASA will do all within their power to push for maximum turnout in their counties to match Jubilee’s high turnouts. The projected turnouts are presented in tables below.

 

The 2013 turnout has been retained in Jubilee strongholds under the assumption that the massive drive for turnout will also be witnessed in the Kenya Elections 2017. From Table 1, we find that Jubilee has 7.6 million votes ready to be bagged, but given a projected turnout of about 90%, the optimum Jubilee can look for in their strongholds is 6.8 million votes. However, we do not expect Jubilee to get 100% of the Jubilee stronghold votes, so with the help of 2013 voting pattern, opinion poll findings and receptions in the campaigns, we projected Jubilee and NASA to perform according to the table below.

According to table 2 above, we predict that Uhuru Kenyatta will garner slightly more than 5.8 million votes from his strongholds, and at the same time we expect Raila Odinga to get slightly more than 900 thousand votes from the same Jubilee counties.

The next set of counties we looked at was NASA strongholds. On voter turnout, we adjusted the turnout percentages in NASA strongholds from an average of 82% to slightly more than 85%. This is because we do not expect low turnout in counties like Kilifi and Mombasa that had very low turnout in 2013, and we also expect the NASA drive for higher voter turnout in the strongholds to bear fruit.

Table 3 reveals that by voters registration NASA has about 8.2 million votes to hope for – about 600 thousand more votes than what Jubilee hopes for in Jubilee strongholds. However, after factoring in the possible 85% turnout, the realistic expectation from NASA will be 6.9 million votes, which is only 100 thousand more votes compared to Jubilee’s realistic expectation indicated in Table 1.

Also, we did not expect Raila Odinga to bag all votes from NASA strongholds, so we went back to 2013 voting patterns, the receptions in campaigns, and the opinion polls to help us predict the voting patterns in NASA strongholds. Results of the predictions are shown in table 4 below.

Table 4 tells us that Uhuru Kenyatta is likely to get over 860 thousand votes from NASA strongholds, whereas Raila is expected to hit 6 million votes from his strongholds.

Up to this point, we find Raila leading with about 6.9 million votes against Uhuru’s 6.7 million votes. But we are not yet done as there are some 3.8 million votes still up for grabs from the battlegrounds. Whoever gets the majority of the battleground votes will obviously win the elections, so we dug into battleground votes with keener eyes.

For voter turnout in battleground counties as indicated in Table 5, we used 2013 figures without changing a thing. The assumption here is that the same drive that made the 84% turnout in battlegrounds should remain constant. After factoring in the turnout, we realized that the leading candidates should have a realistic expectation of grabbing up to 3.2 million votes.

For the actual possible voting pattern, we again visited the 2013 figures, county opinion polls especially for Nairobi and Kajiado, and general campaign performance by the two leading parties in those counties. We then adjusted the 2013 figures accordingly and arrived at figures in Table 6 below.

If you look closely at Table 6, you will realize that Raila scores significantly higher in Nairobi, Kajiado and Narok counties than he did in 2013. The higher percentages for Raila in those counties have been informed by all opinion polls that have given Raila more than 55% in Nairobi county (although we suppressed that to 54%), and the feeling that the Maasai have become more aligned to NASA than they are to Jubilee. This feeling was confirmed by a TIFA opinion poll for Kajiado that gave the incumbent governor more rating than his Jubilee counterpart. Uhuru Kenyatta is also expected to perform better in Tana River, Marsabit and Isiolo than he did in 2013.

After factoring in those factors, we predicted that Raila Odinga will garner almost 1.7 million votes from the battlegrounds, making his total figure to hit 8.6 million votes. On the other hand, Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to garner more than 1.4 million votes, making his total to hit 8.1 million votes. This prediction presents Raila as the winning candidate with more than 400,000 votes compared to votes Uhuru Kenyatta is likely to get.

According to the above methodology, we predicted a Raila win with 8.6 million votes against Uhuru’s 8.17 million votes. The detailed results predicted above is summarized in Table 7 below.