Mobbed, robbed, accused of witchcraft, pollsters in Kenya say they're misunderstood.

Record ID: 899358

  • Title: Mobbed, robbed, accused of witchcraft, pollsters in Kenya say they're misunderstood.
  • Date: 13th July 2017
  • Summary: SCREEN SHOTS OF IPSOS COMPUTER SOFTWARE
  • Embargoed: 27th July 2017 15:26
  • Keywords: IPSOS polls election violence research polling close race
  • Location: NAIROBI, KENYA
  • City: NAIROBI, KENYA
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA0026PJW09J
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The work of political pollsters is still widely misunderstood in Kenya, with international companies like Ipsos accused of everything from corruption to witchcraft.
    Their latest poll showing the presidential race may go to a second round sparked angry denunciations and threats on social media.
    "It's just an omnibus that we do, like a barometer check for the social, economic and political whatever... in the country but that is something that they don't want to believe. They believe that there must be a piper or there must be somebody playing the piper that is calling the tune and that's why we are publishing those results," said Aggrey Oriwo, managing director at Ipsos Kenya.
    Kenyan elections are traditionally tight but there has never been a run-off.
    The latest Ipsos survey of 2,026 Kenyans, released last month, showed 48 percent supported incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta, seeking a second and final five-year term. Forty-two percent supported veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga. Two percent refused to say and eight percent were undecided.
    To win, a politician needs one vote more than 50 percent of the national total, with at least a quarter of the vote in 24 of the 47 counties.
    As Kenyans prepare to elect their next president, lawmakers and local representatives on August 8, the general distrust towards pollsters has flamed into new life.
    "I think also in Kenya from the history of opinion polls they have not really been accurate in informing us who to vote. Because sometimes the ratings they give us and the actual election, what we get is different. So I think they should go out of their way to actually interview actual people," said journalist, Claire Gitau.
    "Opinion polls… it depends I think they are not so credible as such because in this country most likely you might find whoever has money can influence the opinion polls. So guys can buy people. Kenya is generally a corrupt country. You find I can sway people's ideas if I have money," said businessman Sebasitan Owino.
    Even globally, voters faith in pollsters has slipped after polls failed to predict a majority of people in Britain would vote to leave the European Union or that Donald Trump would win the presidential election in the United States.
    To dampen accusations of ethnic bias, Ipsos made a Swahili-speaking American, Tom Wolf, its public face in Kenya. Most media interviews go through him.
    That fame has a price. Wolf has had to flee angry mobs twice and politicians have called for his deportation, threatened to sue Ipsos and complained to its Paris headquarters.
    "This is an area of survey work compared to the west that makes Kenya rather different even if as I said earlier… even in the U.S. in the last election candidate Donald Trump was saying the polls were rigged against him as far as this general main stream conspiracy of the media and I guess the academy of favouring Hilary Clinton, so in that sense America is becoming more like Kenya every day," said Wolf.
    But in Kenya, researchers are faced with many problems beyond lack of faith.
    For its quarterly survey, Ipsos sends pollsters to 200 locations around the country, randomly chosen to reflect population density.
    They've been arrested, accused of sickening children, robbed and swept away by flash floods.
    "Sometimes our interviewers have been caught in between bandit attacks in other instances like in West Pokot, we have had to airlift interviewers to take them out of situations," said Hilda Kiritu, head of public relations for the Kenya office.
    Kenya's last two elections have been marred by irregularities and the opposition has alleged rigging in both. In 2007, protests sparked widespread ethnic violence that killed around 1,200 people. In 2013, Odinga took his challenge to court. Protests were mostly peaceful.
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