By: Jerameel Kevins Owuor Odhiambo
Worth Noting:
- Opinion polls help politicians to decipher what the public wants, and the public understand who is popular in ballot.
- Polls act as a feedback mechanism which could affect parties’ policy choices, whereas nearer to an election, they are feedback mechanism on how the campaign is going.
- However it is incumbent to note that prior to elections politicians use polls as a tool to inform their campaign and to craft messaging. They could also influence voters’ behavior by affecting expectation about the outcomes of the elections.
- Opinion Polls are valuable as they guide policy development by giving decision makers impartial information about what the public wants.
As we head to the elections, Kenyans have been treated to an array of statistics done by various opinion poll agencies from TIFA, Ipsos Synovate among others. These agencies do come up with rankings such as a region’s favorite candidate either presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial or Member of national Assembly. These opinion polls to some extent inform policy and help various political candidates to strategize in their hunt for votes in the various areas in Kenya. To some Kenyans, these poll agencies do a considerable good work in their analysis and in elections past perhaps there is a strong correlation between the opinion polls and the winners in elections. This makes opinion polls very vital and can be used to the advantage of one candidate over another.
For instance, a weaker candidate can consider bribing the opinion poll agencies for him or her to be considered that he is a leading candidate yet that is not the reality on the ground unfortunately. If that happens, there are two things that will be involved. First, the weaker candidate influence will start rising all over sudden as many will perceive that indeed he is winning the seat thus they need to associate with the winning team. On the other hand, the other candidate will castigate the opinion poll agency for lying; the statements might end up being derogatory. After all that is what politics is all about. This other candidate will be affected to the extent that his followers will think that he is losing and decamp from his side.
This is just what happens in the world of Opinion Polls. Put simply, opinion poll is a method for collecting information about the views or beliefs of a given group. Information from an opinion poll can shed light on and potentially allow inferences to be drawn about certain attributes of a larger population. Opinion polls typically involve a sample of respondents, drawn to represents, drawn to represent a larger relevant population, who are asked a standardized series of questions in a fixed form. The results are analyzed for the entire respondent sample, as well as for specific subsamples that represent subgroups in the population.
Opinion polls help politicians to decipher what the public wants, and the public understand who is popular in ballot. Polls act as a feedback mechanism which could affect parties’ policy choices, whereas nearer to an election, they are feedback mechanism on how the campaign is going. However it is incumbent to note that prior to elections politicians use polls as a tool to inform their campaign and to craft messaging. They could also influence voters’ behavior by affecting expectation about the outcomes of the elections. Opinion Polls are valuable as they guide policy development by giving decision makers impartial information about what the public wants.
Ephraim Njenga sometime back shared his thoughts of which I adopt wholesomely as the dangers of opinion polls in Kenya as follows: ‘As someone who has done research for years, I feel that the opinion polls being released should be taken with a pinch of salt. For a poll to be truly scientific, the methodology has to be correct. This is especially so when it comes to sampling. The sampling has to be purely randomized and stratified in line with the realities of the population under study. If you sampling isn’t random but judgmental or even convenient the risk of bias increases. Stratification of the sample is important because the population of the study is heterogeneous. For example, if you are doing a study in Kenya there are political zones even within a county. So if you are polling Nairobi you have to go to both Azimio and Kenya Kwanza zones. If you go to one zone your results will be skewed even if your sampling is randomized.
The pollsters claim to be doing phone interviews. This is where it gets even more confusing: where do they get the sampling frame from you need a register of over 60 million registered phone numbers and the location of the respondent; Since these are mobile phone numbers how do they know that the respondent is a voter in a certain voting area? Kenya is not like the west where pollsters call fixed lines and can clearly tell about the location of the respondent; what software do you use to randomly select 1,200 respondents out of 60 million phone numbers and stratify the sample. These issues need to be considered when consuming the opinion poll data. The margin of error could be higher than reported. Sampling errors can distort findings.’
In a nutshell, opinion polls in Kenya methodologies are crafted to help some candidates advance their course. Opinion polls overtime are politicized. Some agencies have in the past presented data to shift voters towards certain candidates. By the virtue that in Kenya election is about winner takes it all then everyone tries his best to manipulate the electoral environment, including opinion polls to their favor. The purpose of any public survey is to provide accurate information and political opinions polls help to determine what people think regarding politics, trust in leaders and institutions and elections. As of now, political opinion polls are biased and not scientific. Credibility of political opinion polls is in doubt. I humbly submit.
Jerameel Kevins Owuor Odhiambo is a law student at University of Nairobi, Parklands Campus
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