Senator Kipchumba Murkomen of Elgeyo Marakwet now claims that the Deputy President William Ruto-led Kenya Kwanza coalition has conducted its own internal polls that place their candidate ahead of his competitors.
According to Murkomen, Kenya Kwanza has about five independent pollsters who place DP Ruto ahead of his main opponent Azimio la Umoja One Kenya flagbearer Raila Odinga at around 53%.
“We do our own internal polls and we have all the qualified pollsters, machines and everything… To be very fair, even the latest I have seen is 53 percent,” Murkomen said on Citizen TV’s News Night on Tuesday.
“We have also commissioned about five independent pollsters to do it for us that I am privy of and have rated us between 53 and 56 percent.”
While dismissing recent public polls by InfoTrak, Ipsos, and TIFA that showed Ruto trailing Odinga, the senator claimed that the companies were compromised to favor the Azimio candidate, insisting that their own internal pollsters were credible.
Referring to the 2017 election results, in which President Uhuru Kenyatta easily defeated the ODM leader, Murkomen questioned the companies’ credibility, claiming that they had also rated Odinga ahead of Kenyatta days before the elections.
“In 2017, Uhuru was at 41% and Raila was at 53% but it was not the truth. We cannot say, because of the longevity, and the fact that they have done opinion polls for many years that they have credibility, in any case, they have never predicted any president,” said the legislator.
Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang’, who was also on the platform, dismissed Murkomen’s remarks, calling the ‘internal polls’ cited by Murkomen a mere community-based census.
According to Kajwang, who is affiliated with Azimio, Odinga’s popularity is much higher than what opinion pollsters predict.
“They have understated our ratings, we believe we are 50 plus one and unlike Kipchumba’s team that is doing an ethnic census to ascertain their positioning,” Kajwang said.
“We are not looking at the ethnic perspective where you are counting this tribe and lumping another tribe and saying that since we have this and that figure from this community then you are community then we have the entire country.”
With five days until Kenyans go to the polls, three pollsters have ranked Azimio La Umoja One Kenya presidential candidate Raila Odinga ahead of his main challenger William Ruto.
On Tuesday, August 2, 2022, Infotrak gave Odinga 49 percent to Ruto’s 42 percent. IPSOS, on the other hand, put Odinga ahead by 6%, at 47 percent, while TIFA said their figures put Odinga ahead of Ruto in Nairobi and Kajiado counties.
Undecided voters were estimated to be between 4 and 6 percent by pollsters.
