Raila to get 19% of Meru votes, pushing Raila to an easy win- TIFA Research
Elections are exactly one week away and as the day gets closer, predictions on who will win become a betting game. Actually, as a matter of fact, there is a betting company that is already set up to get part of your money if you can predict who will win whatever elections – I guess mostly presidential. In the presidential predictions, some of the most interesting counties to watch include Bomet, Machakos, Kericho, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu, Kajiado, Kwale, Meru and few others. In a dialogue with one of my research colleagues, we somehow agreed that if Raila can get more than 15% of Meru votes, then he’ll carry the day.
In that dialogue, my friend insisted that Raila may not get anything significant above the 8% Meru votes Raila got last elections, as, according to him, the turn up in rallies and the excitement that comes with it does not add to much. Personally I held that Raila has been receiving one of the best receptions ever in Meru since he started vying for the seat of Presidency. I pegged my predictions for Meru votes at 15%.
Surprise surprise to both of us. According to a just released county opinion polls by TIFA research, Raila will get more than the required minimum of 15% of Meru votes that may enable him easily win the presidential votes. He will get a whole 19% of the Meru votes, and with 2% of the Meru voters undecided, he can get as much as 21% of the Meru votes.
When I plug the above percentages in my mathematical model that I set up to predict the elections, Raila jumps from the 8.83 million possible win to 8.86 million votes. However, TIFA research has also come up with a prediction for Machakos County which gives Uhuru Kenyatta too much headway than earlier anticipated. For Machakos, my model had predicted that Uhuru Kenyatta would garner only 10% of the votes, but the new TIFA research gives Uhuru Kenyatta a whooping 37% of the votes against Raila’s 61% of the votes.
Another county that TIFA has released data for is Mombasa county. In that county, there hasn’t been much changes as my prediction had given Raila 65% of the votes against Uhuru’s 30%. The TIFA research refines this prediction to give Raila Odinga 67% of the votes against Uhuru’s 27%. When these new scores are plugged into my model, we have Raila still leading with 8.7 million votes against Uhuru’s 8.0 million.
The surprising performance of Raila in Meru county should imply that the NASA flagbearer is also highly likely to get more votes than anticipated in Jubilee counties of Bomet, Kericho, Nakuru and Uasin Gishu, counties that have given him exceptionally warm receptions during the ongoing campaigns.
Equally, the surprising performance of Uhuru Kenyatta in Machakos should also imply that the President is likely to get a lot of votes from NASA aligned counties of Kwale, Tana River, Taita Taveta, and Bungoma, counties where the President has very strong point men helping him to hunt for votes.
The final prediction, after adjusting for the above counties accordingly, indicate that Raila is still likely to win with 8.75 million votes against Uhuru’s 7.96 million votes – which would be a 50.57% round one win for Raila Odinga.
