Former US President Bill Clinton. He was re-elected in 1996 with a 49 percent voter turnout. [Photo: Daily Mail]
Estimates indicate that the voter turnout during the just concluded repeat October 26 presidential poll was below 35 percent, which is seen as a major blow to President Uhuru Kenyatta's hopes for a decisive second-term electoral mandate.
This is, however, not the problem but how President Uhuru Kenyatta will be able to unite the East African economic powerhouse, whose deep ethnic divisions have threatened to tear apart the 54-year-old nation that was once regarded as an 'island of peace'.
Nevertheless, political pundits argue that for the last 40 years, voter turnout has been steadily declining in both established and emerging democracies.
This is why Kenya is likely to move ahead just like any other country where such low voter turnout was witnessed during a presidential poll.
Here are three examples of popular Presidents whose election was characterized by low voter turnout.
Bill Clinton, one of America’s most successful politicians, was re-elected in 1996 with a 49 percent turnout, the lowest in American history.
In Ghana’s December 2016 presidential election when the current President Nana Akufo-Addo was elected, voter turnout stood at 49 percent, the lowest since 1992.
In Liberia’s November 10, 2011, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first female president, won 90.8 percent of the vote in the low-turnout election where only 37.4 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot.