Social Media Analysis predicts a 50% win for Raila in the 2017 Presidential elections
Kenyans on Twitter and to an extent Facebook have been accused as being useless in as far as determining the future of this country goes. They have been called cowards, spectators, and comfortable middle class lazy bigots who do nothing other than type on their screens to complain when things seem to go wrong. But not anymore. This year, it is Kenyans on Twitter and Facebook that will determine whether or not Uhuru retains his power as the fourth President of Republic of Kenya in the forthcoming 2017 Presidential Elections.
For the purposes of this article, I will assume that every Kenyan active in any other social media platform has a Facebook account, whether that Facebook account is active or not. Further, I will assume that Kenyans not active on Facebook are active in those other social media platforms (Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc). With that in mind, we accept that by approximation the total number of Kenyans who are active on social media platforms are the 7.6 million Kenyans on Facebook.
Of the 7.6 million Kenyans who are active on social medial, 5.5 million of them are youth aged 18 years to 35 years. Lastly, according to IEBC, some 25% of eligible voters did not register, and if we assume that this trend is the same across all age groups, then we’d assume that 4.1 million Kenyan youth active on social media are registered voters.
If we consider these 4.1 million youthful registered voters that are active on social media as non-traditional voters, that is voters that are slightly unlikely to follow the traditional tribal voting patterns, we will be left with 15.5 million voters who will likely vote in the traditional tribal patterns.
If we go by the 2013 voting pattern as the tradition voting pattern, then we arrive at the conclusion that 49.5% of the 13.3 million (86% turnout) traditional voters would vote for Uhuru Kenyatta, while 47.7% will vote for Raila Odinga in the forthcoming 2017 Presidential Elections. From the traditional voters therefore, we should expect Uhuru to garner 6.6 million votes against Raila’s 6.3 million votes.
We now turn focus to the 4.1 million youthful social media savvy voters. How will these voters vote? To answer this, we turn our focus to what they are saying in those social media platforms and in Nairobi, as Nairobi is the geographical location where they are mostly concentrated.
According to Opinion Polls conducted on Twitter by Daily Polls Kenya, Cyprian, Is Nyakundi, and Xtiandela, polls that have garnered more than 10,000 respondents, we have these youthful voters saying that in the 2017 Presidential elections, they will vote for Raila Odinga at 57% and for Uhuru Kenyatta at 35% on Daily Polls Kenya poll that had 12,022 respondents, vote for Raila at 62% and Uhuru Kenyatta at 28% on Cyprian, Is Nyakundi poll that had 14,841 respondents, and vote for Raila at 65% and Uhuru at 35% on Xtiandela poll that had 20,918 respondents.
Who would you vote for president,
If the elections are held today? #IpsosPollKe vs #DailyPollsKE #ChatWithUhuru
Vote then retweet— Daily Polls Kenya ️ (@DailyPollsKE) July 23, 2017
After considering what they stand for, their manifestos & everything, who is your presidential Choice on Aug 8th ?. #NyakundiPoll RT
— Cyprian, Is Nyakundi (@C_NyaKundiH) July 14, 2017
Let’s do the Biggest Poll: VOTE & RETWEET
Between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, who will you vote for?#PresidentialDebateKE #DebatesKE
— Thee Trend Setter ™ (@xtiandela) July 24, 2017
As already mentioned, most of these 4.1 million social media active youths are concentrated in Nairobi, and for us to validate whether what they are saying on Twitter is the same with what they are saying on the ground, we turn to scientifically conducted opinion polls in Nairobi. Interestingly, the two most recent opinion polls conducted in Nairobi by TIFA Research and Infotrak Research agree with the Twitter poll conducted by Daily Polls Kenya, that Raila will win in Nairobi by 55% of the votes (TIFA Research) or win by 56% (Infotrak, Research). We find that these scientific research are close enough to the poll done on Twitter by Daily Polls Kenya. We will therefore use 57% vs 35% for Raila vs Kenyatta respectively in the calculations.
Assuming also that there will be 86% voter turnout with the 4.1 million social media savvy Kenyan voters, we find that 3.5 million of them will cast their votes. From the 3.5 million votes, Raila will get 1.995 million votes (57%) against Uhuru’s 1.225 million votes. Adding the social media savvy votes to the previous traditional voters, we find Raila leading with 8.3 million votes while Uhuru coming second at 7.7 million votes. This analysis therefore strongly indicates that Raila will have a 50% first round one win after the 2017 Presidential Elections.
