“Kenya Votes”
On 8th August 2017, Kenyans braced themselves and engaged in their civic and patriotic duty of participating in the elections. The president-elect was declared by IEBC having attained the required 50% +1 votes and 25% of total votes cast in at least half the counties. According to the declared results, Uhuru Kenyatta emerged the winner with a total of 8,203,290 votes (54.27%) while Raila Odinga garnered 6,762,224 (44.74%) of the total valid votes cast. The results have however been disputed and has been challenged at the Supreme Court.
The following analysis is based on the final presidential results that were declared and published by IEBC.
- Voting Blocs
The presidential results indicates that Kenya still has a distinct voting bloc thereby cementing the idea of the presidential race being a two-horse race between Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta. The same trend was observed in the 2013. Some dynamics have been experienced in the voting blocs. The graph below represent the voting blocs per county
A similar trend has been observed in the 2017 presidential election as illustrated in the graph below:
The following graphs illustrates the support that each of the two leading presidential candidates received from all the counties;
Raila Odinga
From the above graphs, it is evident that Raila Odinga did not manage to increase his support in different counties that he had not received much support for in 2013. Noticeable change is however evident in three counties; Kakamega, Bungoma, and Vihiga. These counties in 2013 election had largely supported Musalia Mudavadi, who is now among the co-principals of NASA. There was evident decrease in support among some counties such as Kisii, Turkana, Nyamira, Tana River, Samburu, Narok, and Wajir. The largest decrease in support was in Marsabit County from 48.78% to 14.44%.
Uhuru Kenyatta
On the other hand, the trend on Uhuru’s graph indicates increased support from the counties that he did not receive much support. Most noticeable increment in Uhuru’s support was evident in Marsabit, Nyamira, Kisii, Kwale, Taita Taveta, and Bungoma counties. Uhuru received slightly less supported than he had done in 2013 in counties such as Mandera, Bomet, West Pokot, and Isiolo.
2. Voters’ Turnout
It can be observed that the 2017 elections recorded a lower overall voter turnout as compared to 2013. Only Turkana County recorded a higher voter turnout in 2017 than it had in 2013. Kilifi County recorded the same percentage of voter turn-out as it had in the 2013 elections. Kisumu County had the largest decrease in Voter turnout from 90.00% to 70%. The lowest voter turnout in the 2017 election was recorded in Mombasa County. This trend calls for the need of more campaigns to sensitize the registered voters on the importance of engaging in the national elections.
Voters’ turnout per voting blocs
As illustrated in the graph above, there was a reported high turnout of voters in counties where Uhuru gets most support. The voter turnout in these Uhuru strongholds maintains a fairly stable trend. On the other hand, Raila Odinga’s stronghold experience slightly lower voter turnouts. The rugged graph on NASA’s stronghold indicates variations by significant margins in voters’ turnout.
Out of the ten counties that had the lowest voters’ turnout, seven voted overwhelmingly for Raila, two for Uhuru while in one county (Garissa County) the two leading candidates enjoyed almost similar support.
3. Rejected Votes
Rejected votes in the presidential elections have always provided an intriguing phenomenon. After the 2013 elections, a case had been submitted to the Supreme Court seeking the inclusion of 108,975 rejected votes in the final tally of the presidential results. During the 2017 elections, 81,685 of the presidential votes cast were indicated by IEBC to have been rejected. If the rejected votes were a candidate, they would have come in third position after Raila and Uhuru.
The following graph illustrates the rejected votes against all votes casted per county
As illustrated on the graph above, there was a general reduction in the number of rejected votes in 2017 as compared to 2013. This reduction was experienced despite the fact that more votes were cast in 2017 as compared to 2013. This may be an indicator of the increased effectiveness of the civic education instituted by the IEBC that enlightened most voters on the voting process. The highest proportion of rejected votes was recorded in Lamu County. It can be observed that most of the counties with highest rejected votes in 2017 also had the highest rejected votes in 2013. IEBC should focus more on these counties with voters’ education on the election process.
