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By AHMEDNASIR ABDULLAHIA cruel hoax is being recklessly but gleefully played on innocent Kenyans. This hoax is the self-serving computer-generated numbers touted as opinion polls by pollsters.
These pollsters, if one blindly believes them, are showing that the two leading presidential candidates are tied and we should prepare for a second round of voting. Nothing could be further from the truth.
These polls are utter nonsense and I refuse to believe one single one. I am a religious believer in pollsters, but credible ones that use science and not fiction, black magic or fantasy.
In the last American presidential elections, my sole source of polls was Nate Silver who writes his FiveThirtyEight column for the New York Times. He got it right in all 50 states, right to the decimal.
The March 4 presidential election will be determined by two factors, and the pollsters are oblivious to both.
First, the tribal base of the two presidential candidates and their running mates will be the biggest determinant. This is what I call the engagement of the primary tribes. These primary tribes dominate Central, Nairobi, Eastern, Nyanza and the Rift Valley.
They account for about 60 per cent of the electoral vote. The primary tribes will land the decisive blow in the contest.
Here, the contest is heavily tilted in favour of Mr Uhuru Kenyatta and his running mate, Mr William Ruto. In this regard, Mr Raila Odinga and Mr Kalonzo Musyoka will bring to the ballot box about 3.5 million of their two primary tribes from across the country. Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto will between them bring 6.6 million votes from their primary tribes.
In the contest between the primary tribes, Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka have a huge mountain to climb. The numerical advantage enjoyed by Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto is the most pivotal and one-sided determinant factor in any election in the history of this country.
The tragedy for Mr Odinga and Mr Musyoka is that since the primary tribes cast their ballot on a tribal basis, they are rationally powerless to influence and mitigate their crippling disadvantage in this regard.
The second determinant factor is the swing tribes in other parts of the country. The swing tribes are the secondary tribes in the contest.
The secondary tribes don’t have a tribesman with any realistic chance of winning, or have none at all in the presidential contest. These tribes, for the purposes of the election, are good Kenyans, uninfluenced by tribal fever or madness in their choice. They are rational, pragmatic and calculating.
It is the fight over the votes of the secondary tribes that has the potential to mitigate Mr Odinga’s and Mr Musyoka’s disadvantage. The most numerous of the secondary tribes are the Luhya, Kisii and those in the Coast province.
In western Kenya, Mr Musalia Mudavadi’s absence from the ballot would have made that community probably a primary tribe in Mr Odinga’s column.
For Mr Odinga to recover the deficit he suffers in the primary tribes’ contest, he must get 100 per cent of the votes cast in western Kenya, Coast, northern Kenya and in Kisii Nyanza.
That might sound unrealistic, but only the happening of such a difficult feat will take the contest into the second round. The more realistic but unhelpful forecast is that Mr Odinga is the odds on favourite to win these regions with percentages ranging from 50 to 70 per cent of the vote.
Some Kenyans refuse to appreciate the obvious. We are a society that is tribal in our manifestations.
There is nothing wrong with being tribal at this point in our political evolution. It is both natural and human. The contest between the two is a zero-sum tussle between four primary tribes and their supporting cast.
Ahmednasir Abdullahi is the publisher, Nairobi Law Monthly. ahmednasir@nairobilawmonthly.com