Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition presidential duo of Raila Odinga and Martha Karua are the most preferred candidates with 39 per cent as compared to William Ruto and Rigathe Gachagua 35 per cent, according to TIFA research.
Speaking on Wednesday at a Nairobi Hotel while releasing the research findings, Analyst Dr. Tom Wolf stated that as of now, no political party attracts the support of more than one-third of Kenyans.
Comparing the main presidential candidates and their running-mates in terms of gender, Wolf said that more men support both Odinga-Karua (43 per cent) and Ruto-Gachagua is at 39 per cent. With 35 per cent of the women supporting both Odinga-Karua while 32 per cent support Ruto-Gachagua.
In terms of party popularity, UDA is more popular countrywide than ODM party but the Azimio coalition is more popular than the Kenya Kwanza Alliance.
“UDA is at 29 per cent, while ODM is at 25 per cent. A small minority identify with Jubilee (3), whereas 13per cent are yet to decide about their preferred party and 18 per cent identify with no party,” said Wolf.
“Further, while nearly all ODM supporters also support the Azimio coalition 96 per cent, rather fewer supporters of UDA also support the Kenya Kwanza Alliance 85 per cent,” said Wolf.
According to the report, it is evident that Azimio’s highest level of support is found in Nyanza, Coast, Lower Eastern, Nairobi and Western. Similarly, the Kenya Kwanza Alliance is most popular in, Central Rift, South Rift, Mount Kenya and Northern Kenya.
“Substantially more Kenyans could name Odinga’s running-mate than Ruto’s (Karua: 85 per cent versus Gachagua: 59 per cent) the same difference applies to Musyoka’s running-mate (Sunkuli), though at far lower levels of awareness among all Kenyans and among the latter presidential candidate’s supporters (21 per cent and 38 per cent),” revealed Wolf.
Based on the results from TIFA’s April survey (barely three weeks ago), the distribution of expressed voting-intentions to Raila has changed across the country. His support-level has risen from 32 per cent to 39 per cent as opposed to Ruto’s which has dropped from 39per cent to 35per cent.
“It remains impossible to predict how close this contest will be and any run-off contest will be very unlikely unless all the other presidential candidates can garner at least about 5% of the total (valid) votes cast,” stated Wolf.
The research that was done using telephonic interviews was meant to find out the influence the running mates had on the presidential results if elections were to be held today.
The survey results were obtained from a sample size of 1,719 which was carried out on the 17th of May, 2022.
