The truth About Opinion Polls In Kenya

Experts urge Kenyans to learn to accommodate opinion polls

Angela Ambitho, group CEO Infotrak Research & Consulting    Photo: Diana Ngila

Pundits urged Kenyans on Tuesday to learn to embrace opinion polls.

Speaking at a media roundtable organized by Media Focus on Africa, a non-governmental organization disseminating media programmes for social change,media practitioners and experts in opinion polls argued that opinion polls were the new normal in democratic societies.

Presenters, drawn mainly from the media and civil society, included Angela Ambitho, CEO, Infotrak Research & Consulting, Brice Rambaud, Program Director, Democracy and Governance, Internews in Kenya, Linus Kaikai, Managing Editor, NTV and Stephaine Muchai of Article 9.

The roundtable explored on the synergy between opinion polls and democracy in the Kenyan context.

Consequently, the presenters touched on the hot air that opinion polling has been causing in the country.

Comparing opinion polls to the analogy of worst form democracy apart from the others as espoused by Winston Churchil, Ambitho contended that opinion polls are the best bet people have for expressing their opinions in their democratic societies.

They give the populace the freedom to express their sentiments on pertinent issues, she added pointing that dictatorial leaders would stop at nothing to curtail this freedom.

Opinion polling is new in the democratic space, especially in the Kenyan context, and as such it should be treated like a new baby, she urged.

Recent polls have been centers of antagonism in the mainstream Kenyan politics. A recent one pitting presidential hopefuls placed Raila Odinga at the top with 46% popularity followed by Uhuru Kenyatta at 40% popularity, Musalia Mudavadi at 5% popularity while the rest performed dismally at below 1%.

Those who did not fair as well as they anticipated reacted by discrediting opinion polls as schemes by their opponents. 

Rubbishing this noise on opinion polling in Kenyan politics, Ambitho urged the participants to wonder why politicians would be quick to disown outcomes of opinion polls when they are not in their favor, while embracing and advocating for those outcomes whenever they favor them.

Kaikai likened this to the inconsistency amongst Kenyans, something he described as the "tragedy of the century."

"Its high time Kenyans appreciate the fact that everyone does not think alike," Ambitho urged, adding that these diversities are worth celebrating. 

Asked whether opinion polls could trigger post poll violence, especially when the candidate touted in the polls to win fails to clinch the elections, the panelists unanimously answered to the negative.

"We have seen how accurate these polls can be in the recent elections in the United States", Kaikai said.

The resolve to descend into violence is deliberately hatched by the politicians and sold to the gullible public deliberately, he added. 

Similar sentiments were echoed by Ambitho who cautioned that the 2007 elections in Kenya should not be quoted as a case study of the inefficacy of opinion polls.

"No body knows who won the elections" she added quoting the findings of the Kriegler Report.

Credible pollsters naturally abide by set principles of the profession that ensure among others that respondents should not be less than 1500, Ambitho owned. 

She likened the ease and inevitability in abiding by these principles to bathing, brushing teeth and combing one's hair. 

The contention that the media does not utilize information from opinion polls correctly surfaced. 

Rambaud contended that his organization had faulted the way Kenyan journalists interrogated the reports on opinion polls.

Recently, Internews has been training Kenyan journalists on appropriate ways of interogating and reporting on the outcomes of opinion polls, he added.

He urged media houses to ensure that they scrutinize the methodology, the universe of the study, the duration taken in fieldwork, the sponsors and even the data analysis. 

"For credibility, media houses can commission their own polls," he added before dissuading the media houses from relying on instant polls. 

Rambaud and Ambitho concurred that instant polls, the kind that involves the media posing a question and inviting the audience to send text messages, were unscientific, lacked representativeness and and that their outcomes could be easily swayed by stakeholders.

Participants were urged not to allow the application of opinion polls in politics narrow their imagination of their essence. 

Opinion polls have many more important uses, Ambitho directed.

The 2-hour media roundtable, venued at Nairobi's Alliance Francaise, was moderated by Stephanie Muchai.