President Uhuru leads in latest opinion polls

photo:courtesy

President Uhuru Kenyatta still has an edge of 5 points over his main rival Raila Odinga according to latest opinion polls by Infotrack Research.

With just 38 days to the August 8 General Election, the survey indicates that 48 percent of voters will pick Uhuru over Raila who is rated at 43 percent.

8 percent of Kenyan voters are still undecided according to the survey that was conducted between 24^thand 25^th of June.

Four other candidates share just 1 percent of the vote with Abduba Dida scoring 0.5 percent of the poll while Ekuru Aukot, Joe Nyaga and Cyrus Jirongo have o.1 percent each.

President Uhuru enjoys massive support in his central Kenya backyard and North Eastern region with 90 and 75 percent respectively of those surveyed saying they will vote for him. He enjoys support in other areas as Eastern (58%), Rift Valley (56%), Nairobi (41%), Coast (29%), Western (28%) and Nyanza (14%).

On the other side, Raila’s Nyanza backyard supports him at 83 percent, followed by Coast (61%), Western (53%), Nairobi (51%), Eastern (37%), Rift Valley (34%), North Eastern (20%) and least in Central (5%).

The survey further indicated that 47 percent of voters identify themselves with Uhuru’s Jubilee Party while 43 percent support Raila’s National Super Alliance (NASA).

5 percent of those polled did not to disclose their affiliation, 3 percent remain undecided while another 3 percent do not identify with any party.

The poll was conducted in 29 constituencies to represent the 290 electoral areas across the country using household computer assisted personal interviews.

A sample of 2000 respondents to represent 19.6 million registered voters was interviews, translating into a margin of error 2.2 at 95 percent degree of confidence.

The survey also found that half of Kenyans (50%) feel the country is headed on the wrong direction, while 45% feel the country is in the right trajectory. 4% of those polled had no comment.

Central Kenya had the highest approval of the country’s direction route with 80% feeling Kenya is on the right direction, followed by North Eastern at 79%.  However majority in Nyanza (67%), Coast (66%), Nairobi (60%), Western (59%), and Eastern (52%) feel the country has lost direction.

Rift Valley however has a divided opinion with 49% feeling the country is on the wrong as opposed to 48% who think it’s on the right.

In spite of the levels of insecurity especially in North Easter, the researchers found that the residents still give a high approval to the state of the country perhaps due to their indicators.

“The living standards of those people in North Eastern are perhaps much better in spite of insecurity incidents and that explains the disparity," Infotrack’s Angela Ambitho said.