The Eight States to Decide a Buhari versus Atiku Contest at the 2019 Presidential Elections

Out of all the people that have declared to run for the Nigerian Presidential Elections in 2019, the only other contestant that has the same widespread name recognition across the country as President Buhari is Former Vice President Abubakar Atiku, who resided in Aso Rock from 1999 to 2007.

Atiku has not been shy in making his intentions known about becoming President and even contested in the 2007 elections. He was also pipped to be APC’s flag bearer in the last general election by President Buhari. He has now returned to the fold of the PDP, a party he helped found but left to nurse his presidential ambition.

As the current front runner in the country’s only major opposition party, we at Kingmakers.com.ng decided to take a look at the possible match-up between President Buhari and Abubakar Atiku, should he emerge the flag bearer of the PDP.

Our analysis brought us to the conclusion that like of the 2015 Presidential Elections, this will be another tightly contested election and the decision of who will emerge the winner will come down to 8 states.

We started off our analysis by looking at the average winning margins within each state in the Federation including Abuja FCT using the data from previous election from 1999 to date but excluding that of 2003 which many considered to have been severely flawed.

We used that to get an idea of the percentage of votes the winner and loser will get in each state if it was a straight contest between just the APC and the PDP. Using the data of the number of accredited voters in each state from the last general elections, we applied those percentages to get the number of votes for the winner and loser in each state.

We then took a look at the historical voting trend and then assigned a winner and loser to either Buhari or Atiku based on those precedents and this was what we got.

· 8 states including Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Katsina, Niger, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara have always voted in favour of President Buhari from the 2003 elections and are extremely likely to back him again in the 2019 elections.

· Borno, Kaduna and Kebbi will likely go to President Buhari. He has won and lost in these states but all three states backed him in the last general elections.

· 16 states including Abia, Abuja FCT, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Enugu, Imo, Nasarawa, Plateau, Rivers and Taraba have never voted in favour of President Buhari and instead have backed the PDP in all the presidential elections held since 1999.

· Adamawa backed President Buhari in the last two presidential elections but being the home state of Atiku, we presume he will use that to his advantage and hence assigned him as a winner in that state

· This now leaves 8 states, namely Benue, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo where the decision could swing either way.

Benue, Kogi and Kwara are the only states in the country that have backed the winners in all the presidential elections held since 1999. They had traditionally backed PDP presidential candidates but swung their support behind President Buhari in the last elections. Also the margins of wins here tend to be a lot smaller as compared to other parts of the country, so elections here are always tightly contested. Hence, whoever wins in these 3 states in the next general election should see it as a good omen.

Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun and Oyo are about the only states in Nigeria that have fallen in and out of love with PDP Presidential candidates. While they all backed President Buhari in the last elections, the volatility of their support over the years makes it hard to predict who they will support come the 2019 elections.

Now, the collation of the total number of votes from the assigned states will give President Buhari a slight edge with 9.7 million votes over Atiku’s 8.4 million. Far from a knockout blow and still leaves the room open for Atiku. The election will most likely be decided by the 5.5 million voters in these 8 states and a strong finish by either candidate will most likely hand them the keys to Aso Rock come May 29, 2019.