'Handshake to Power, or Kiss of Political Death?' A Central Question of this Election

Among all those (13 percent), there was little difference between those supporting Odinga and Ruto (11 percent of the former and 11 percent of the latter).

However, among the few respondents who admitted to having changed from one candidate previously to another now, Odinga was clearly the main beneficiary, even if, among those who had changed from being decided previously to supporting any candidate now, Ruto has made a greater gain.

That is, while among those who have changed their voting intention from one president candidate to another Odinga had a 12 percent advantage (i.e., 40% vs. 31%):

Several points can be drawn from these responses. One is that more 'newcomers' in terms of deciding which of the two main presidential candidates to support had moved to Ruto than to Raila on the basis on specific campaign promises, including those detailed in the Kenya Kwanza manifesto (56% vs. 43%).

On the other hand, more of those who decided to vote for Odinga did so on the basis of his choice of a running-mate (16% vs. 10%).

Likewise, Odinga had an advantage among those who had to support another candidate because their preferred one had withdrawn from the race (13% vs. 8%), clearly a consequence of the decision not to contest by Kalonzo Musyoka and Musalia Mudavadi in particular.

Next, in this series of questions, we asked all respondents if they had voted for Odinga in the 2017 election, and split them into two groups: those who say did and did not do this. We then correlated each group with their present presidential voting intentions, producing the following figures:

As shown, the most frequent response was his relationship with President Kenyatta (42 percent). But other reasons also received considerable mentions: unhappiness with the ODM nominations (12 percent), and that he has "changed his policies/agenda" - also clearly another way of expressing a rejection of his 'handshake' relationship with the president.

At the same time, two other reasons - that "his elections are always stolen" and "his age" having nothing to do with his political 'about-face' since March, 2018.

So, Who Gains, Who Loses, and What Future for Kenya's Electoral Politics?

I began this analysis by posing the question of how the nearly-total role-reversal of the former Prime Minister with the Deputy, encapsulated in his inverted relationship with President Kenyatta since the 'handshake', would affect the outcome of the presidential election.

While survey figures, however 'scientific' cannot predict such a result in a close contest and where differential voter turnout cannot be calculated in advance (or where not all respondents are prepared to reveal their true intentions), such research can, nevertheless, reveal some of the underlying dynamics at play in the decision-making choices that all voters must confront.

Of course, with all the attention on the outcome, it is understandable if certain critical, longer-term, questions have seldom been asked.

These might include the following: (1) What is the relationship of leaders to their political parties when they contemplate making such 180-degree flips in terms of their relationships with one another? Or to put it another way, does the general absence of policy-identity of the main parties invite such short-term, if not opportunistic, role-reversals?

(2) What are voters to make of the policy-content of the ballot-choices they confront when the most influential leaders restructure their relationships in such ways?

(3) How will the fall-out between the president and his deputy, and the former's embracing of his former electoral foe affect the calculations of other leaders moving forward when achieving power is seen as contingent on jettisoning certain past positions and alliances?

And more generally, (4) Does this fluidity of election alliances in Kenyan politics support rather than undermine national unity, if former foes can become fast-friends, based on changing circumstances, so that "issue-based" politics as embodied more or less permanently in political parties - one of the governance pillars of Vision 2030 - will have to wait until Kenyan society is more concretely divided into interest groups that use competitive politics to achieve their policy ends?

Such questions may seem quite distant this week. For now, as the votes are tallied, let us see how voters have answered some of the more immediate ones that were addressed in a number of recent surveys such as TIFA's.

Dr. Wolf is a research analyst for TIFA Research in Nairobi.