Raila voting in 2013 [Photo/bbc.com]
In a tweet last week, Mutahi Ngunyi held a survey. In the survey, he asked if we thought 26th October would be Raila’s retirement day.
The comments were not pretty (as usual) but a 67% voted that Raila should, and would retire on the 26th.
Such a poll caused me to look back at my notes. The same notes that had us predicting a 54% – 46% win for Uhuru Kenyatta a few months before the August polls. (Please google us for more information.)
How did we came up with an accurate number?
It is very simple…we sat down with the results from previous elections as I shall elaborate.
In the disputed 2007 poll, Kibaki won by 46% of votes cast. The difference in votes between the two candidates was a mere 225,000.
In 2013, Uhuru won with 50.07% of the vote. Raila had 43.31%. Please remember that both Uhuru and Ruto were facing ICC cases and the odds were against them. This should have caused them to lose the elections, but they did not. Instead, they preached a message of reconciliation and managed to escape the ICC with a win.
Now, prior to August 8th, the same duo of Uhuru and Ruto was still intact and stronger than before.
If you can recognize patterns, you would have noted that the two had gathered momentum. At the same time, there was infighting in Nasa between Kalonzo who wanted to run as president, and a defiant Raila who claimed he stood the best chance at dethroning Uhuru.
Raila lost!
In his appeal at the Supreme Court, he did not dispute the results. He chose to highlight the flaws in the method of transmission of the said results.
It is with such a premise that we can conclude that Raila does not have the numbers. This can explain why his attention is geared towards IEBC and the election process rather than campaigning.