Why Citizen TV, NTV and KTN are not agreeing with each other on the presidential results

by Odipo Riaga · Published August 10, 2022 · Updated August 10, 2022

The presidential results started streaming in last night after the voting exercise. Since then, citizens have been glued to their screens to monitor the performance of their preferred candidates. Those watching Citizen TV right now have believed that Raila Odinga has given William Ruto a wide gap of 5.16 percentage points, whereas those watching NTV believe that Ruto has taken a strong lead with 52.3% of the vote against Rail’s 47.06%. KTN on the other hand has put Ruto in the lead with 51.69% against Raila’s 47.7%. The differences in these figures arise from two areas 1. The number form 34As each station has processed, and 2. the places from where the processed form 34As have come from.

The number of form 34As processed by each station

Nation Media Group (NTV) is leading in the number of form 34As they have processed, given that as of the time of this writing, the figures presented through their portal showed a total of 6,217,735 (6.2 million) votes processed. These votes have come from all the counties, but looking at the performance of each candidate through their map, it is easy to see that they have processed more forms from Ruto’s strongholds compared to Raila’s strongholds.

Standard Media Group (KTN) is following Nation Media Group by the number of forms processed. Through simple addition, one can see that the forms processed by KTN account for 5,339,140 (5.3 million) votes. Examining the performance of each candidate in the counties, one can see that Standard Media Group has tried to sample an almost equal number of forms from each of the two leading candidates’ strongholds.

Citizen TV has processed the least number of form 34As that account for 5,001,323 (5 million votes). Again, looking at the figures by county, it is easy to see that forms from Raila strongholds have more representation compared to forms from Ruto’s strongholds. This explains why Raila is shown by Citizen TV to be leading by 51.92% of the vote.

The forms processed by each station come from different places

The second reason why the presidential results by both KTN and NTV show Ruto in the lead whereas Citizen TV shows Raila to be in the lead is that the forms they have processed aren’t from the same places. For example, a Citizen TV data entry clerk may process 17 forms from Siaya, while at the same time a data entry clerk from NTV processes 36 forms from Kericho. When the two clerks upload their data at the same time, it is obvious that results putting Raila ahead will be prominent on Citizen TV, whereas results showing Ruto to be ahead will be prominent on NTV.

So who is actually leading?

You can know who is actually leading by doing two things:

Figuring the actual turnout for each county
Figuring out the percentage performance by each candidate in the counties.

Figuring the actual turnout for each county is a daunting task which I did last night. The first thing you need to do is to realise that you cannot, as an individual, obtain this data from all forms 34As, unless you have weeks upon weeks of data entry time. The next thing you need to do is to figure out how to obtain an appropriate sample size for form 34As that you can process within a reasonable time. In my case, I figured that I could handle around 600 forms overnight, then using simple mathematics of proportionality I allocated the 600 forms to each county weighted by the number of registered voters in those counties. I then ensured that almost all constituencies were represented when collecting the turnout data from the forms.

Without going into further details, I was able to determine that the national turnout will be around 65.22% (with about a 2% margin of error), then used the percentages that were being reported by the media houses to calculate the final performance of the candidates. According to my calculations, Ruto is currently in the lead by 50.41% of the vote as Raila comes in close at 48.09% of the vote. Given that my calculations have a 2% margin of error, it can still turn out that Raila will garner somewhere between 46.09% and 50.09% as Ruto’s performance falls between 48.45% and 52.45%.

In conclusion, it is still very hard to tell who will be declared the winner by IEBC given the prevailing presidential results, but I suspect it is William Samoei Ruto.