Jubilee, Nasa should not fight pollsters but strive to win hearts and minds of voters

There are four predictable ways politicians react to the results of an opinion poll.

If they favour them, they will say they are a true reflection of what is happening on the ground and suggest that the percentages may, in fact, be higher.

If they do not favour them, they will denounce the pollster’s credibility, question the methodology and or sampling and declare that the only opinion that counts will be known on election day and it will prove the pollsters wrong.

SUBVERTING DEMOCRACY
Fearing favourable polling may cause apathy, they will adopt the position that nothing is decided until the last ballot is counted and advise the electorate to ignore pollsters because they must vote for their vote to count.

Piqued, they will brand the pollster a hireling and hatchet men of their political adversaries and aiding them in the sinister scheme to confuse and cause despondency and apathy among the electorate and, subvert democracy.

But recent developments seem to dictate the way pollsters are regarded.

US ELECTION

They got it horribly wrong in last year’s presidential election in the US.

Almost all of them gave Donald Trump no chance of becoming president.

When the results were in, many observers wondered if pollsters would remain in business.

On the other side of the Atlantic, they had wrongly predicted the Brits would vote in last year’s referendum to remain in the European Union.

When the results were in, the Brits had voted to exit the EU.

PREVIOUS FAILURES

In 2015, pollsters predicted a tight General Election race in the UK producing a possible hung parliament.

When the counting was over and done with, the Conservatives had won a majority.

Most observers around the world, therefore, want to treat political opinion polling with a generous pinch of salt.

In Kenya, politicians fight over opinion polls and fight the pollsters depending on how the results affect them.

CAUSE FOR WORRY
Majority Leader Aden Duale says when he was in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), they used to influence pollsters to rig results.

Former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who has never polled in double digits, has never had a kind word for pollsters.

Regardless of their respective takes, the results of the latest opinion poll by Ipsos Synovate should cause the governing Jubilee Party and rival National Super Alliance (Nasa), their supporters and politically inclined Kenyans to sit up and take notice.

As Synovate’s Tom Wolf told it, Jubilee’s leader, incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta, leads Nasa’s presidential torchbearer Raila Odinga by five percentage points, but the latter has cut the former’s lead by some 12 points.

AFFILIATE PARTIES
And Wolf said that one per cent of those polled were undecided as to who between President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga they should vote for.

These two points merit discussion because Kenya is 65 days away from a General Election.

Where have Mr Odinga’s new supporters come from?

Mr Wolf was sure that they have come from inside Nasa.

That is, the union of ODM, Wiper Democratic Movement, Ford Kenya and Amani National Congress has boosted Mr Odinga’s numbers.

UNDECIDED VOTERS

If Ipsos is right, then Mr Odinga and Nasa must not only ensure that they keep Nasa strongholds under lock and key, but must also campaign furiously in those parts of Kenya that have been identified as battlegrounds to convert them to Nasa enclaves.

Mr Wolf said about one per cent of those polled are yet to decide who, between President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga, they will vote for on August 8.

A Nation analysis put this one per cent at about one million votes.

Every vote counts and a million kill off a contest.

CHOICES
That means Nasa and Jubilee must identify the undecided and convert them to their cause.

But why do we already have the decided and undecided? And why should these positions hold?

The parties have not campaigned or published their policies yet.

Voters change positions because they have been persuaded by campaigns to support this, that or the next idea; voters change because they have been given choices; and the undecided flip to deciders because they are converted to believe in, and support, a cause.

HILLARY'S LOSS
In other words, Jubilee and Nasa should not fight polls or pollsters but fight to win the hearts and minds of voters.

Last week I read an article that pointed out 24 reasons Hillary Clinton has given for losing to Trump.

She did not include her performance among those reasons yet, seriously, she should have.

Opanga is a commentator with a bias for politics [email protected]