The history of mistrusting opinion polls

Opinion polls are here with us – and they are as controversial as ever.

The battle lines between the pollsters and the politicos are drawn and there is no peace in between. Only a grey area.

One of the trending memes last week was that of presidential candidate Raila Odinga and Infotrak Managing Director Angela Ambitho in a kitchen ostensibly cooking figures.

READ: What polls predict on fate of governors 

READ: Jubilee starts 'war' with Infotrak

METHODOLOGY

Similarly, Tom Wolf of Ipsos/Synovate had his poll numbers dismissed as “stale” by Ms Ambitho even as he earned his share of criticism from Nasa bloggers.

“Tom’s current poll is a little stale right now, while ours is as fresh as yesterday,” Ms Ambitho told a local station.

Dr Wolf said they used “the right methodology”, which Ms Ambitho tended to differ with.

POLLING
That pollsters are forced – every now and then – to defend their figures has become the norm in Kenya’s political arena.

Whether the polling business is getting tricky depends on whom you ask.

This is because the polling business in Kenya is mired in a short history of interests.

The first published opinion polls in the country took place in 1992 when some donors brought together various interests to form what was known as National Election Monitoring Unit (NEMU) led by the late Grace Githu, a human rights activist.

AGENCIES
But though it seemed independent, or it was assumed to be, NEMU was being funded by Western donors eager to have a regime change in the country.

NEMU had brought together four bodies: The National Ecumenical Civic Education Programme (NECEP), which brought in various religious groups, the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), the International Commission of Jurists led by Charles Nyachae and the Professional Committee for Democratic Change headed by Lee Muthoga.

While Kanu accused NEMU as partisan, it was highly regarded in western embassies and was headed by a “Council of Elders” chaired by Duncan Ndegwa with Rev Samuel Kobia as his deputy.

CIVIC EDUCATION

Mr Ndegwa was one of the insiders then within Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party (DP).

NEMU would later grow to become the Institute for Education in Democracy, a body that conducted civic education besides monitoring elections in various countries.

At first, NEMU’s main purpose was to train about 5,000 observers since it anticipated rigging by Kanu.

RIGGING
As such, it was not an independent body in conducting opinion polls – although it did – as it was highly regarded by Kanu politicos as leaning towards the opposition, which it was.

But having said that, they predicted a Moi victory correctly – although it is now known that Kanu stole the election by printing excess ballot papers.

(The British firm printed two sets of ballot papers with same serial numbers but the Matiba petition did not advance at the High Court after judges ruled that he had not personally signed the petition. Matiba could not sign due to a stroke he had suffered in detention!)

PROPAGANDA
Before that, only Hillary Ngw’eno’s Weekly Review seemed to attempt opinion polls by indicating the likelihood of candidate’s win at the Constituency level.

But that was during the single party rule, a time when historian Charles Hornsby says the “government had little interest in the opinion of Kenya’s citizens”.

His 1979 attempt to conduct such a poll was dramatically brought to an end when the government threatened to withdraw advertising and Mr Ngw’eno, one of Kenya’s finest journalists, would later succumb to Kanu’s intimidation and later become part of its propaganda machine.

FAKE POLLS
The 1992 election was perhaps the most dramatic in terms of opinion polls.

For the first time, fake opinion polls emerged and the most brazen was by Society magazine led by former Nation parliamentary reporter Pius Nyamora, which was predicting a victory for its preferred candidate Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

“The only serious candidates in our opinion is Mr Odinga, Mwai Kibaki and Daniel arap Moi,” the influential magazine wrote in one of its opinion polls.

MOI'S VICTORY

They did not mention Kenneth Matiba whom they dismissed as “a spoiler”.

In the end, it was Moi who won the race followed by Matiba, Kibaki and Odinga at the tail-end.

There were other opinion polls conducted by Evans Ondieki’s Operation Moi Wins (OMW), which was predicting a triumph for President Moi.

OMW, whose only rival to notoriety was Cyrus Jirongo’s Youth for Kanu 92, used to intimidate opponents with money:

“There is nothing to hide,” Ondieki said in Embu. “We are going to pour an amount of money never seen before to ensure President Moi is voted in again.”

POLITICS
Scholars say that it was due to Kanu’s dictatorial tendencies that many firms feared conducting opinion polls then.

Even those that conducted opinion polls in 1997 and rightly predicted that Moi would win the election feared to make their results public.

Even old hands such as Steadman group, founded in 1984, did not want to dip their fingers into political arena.

The Steadman Group was a pioneer in opinion polling when it launched the Business Leaders Confidence Index (BLCI), which was collecting business leaders’ perceptions about the economy.

STEADMAN

It was also providing custom market research and media monitoring for African businesses and international clients and there seemed to be no business in political polling.

It was only after Steadman was bought by the Robert Lerwill-led Aegis Group, a UK media buying group, that it started serious inroads into polling business.

It was at a time when Aegis was fighting a battle with French corporate raider Vincent Bollore, who was chairman and 24 per cent shareholder of Aegis’s Paris-listed rival Havas, and his entry into Kenya was part of this war of survival.

LEVERAGE

In 2008 – Lerwill was out and Havas had then grabbed some major clients in Kenya including Unilever, Total, MTN and Orange.

Political polling gives these companies big leverage at the political arena, and some quick bucks when commissioned by the political parties and government. At times, polling gets tricky.

The 2007 was perhaps the trickiest because of the statistical dead heat that it offered.

INFOTRAK

It was this time that we witnessed the rise of the Steadman Group under George Waititu offering some pointers in a very tight race.

That is how Steadman became influential in shaping public perception – and became a household name.

Another new entrant into the scene was Angela Ambitho who had founded Infotrak Research and Consulting in 2004 to provide what they then called “information solutions”.

HARRIS POLL

Their first breakthrough was when they conducted ‘sextrak’ study, which found that half of teenagers who got pregnant opted for abortion to rid themselves of social stigma.

After that study, Infotrak became the talk of town.

In 2007, Ms Ambitho joined hands with a former Tanzanian District Officer and magistrate Humphrey Taylor who brought in the Harris Poll into Kenya.

CAMPAIGNS
At that time, Mr Taylor was the chairman of Harris Poll, which was seeking to expand its global footprint.

Taylor had been in private political polling business for the UK Conservative Party and was a close adviser to Prime Minister Edward Heath in the 1970 campaign.

He also later did polling business for Margaret Thatcher before his firm was acquired by Louis Harris and Associates, and he shifted to New York as CEO.

In New York he had joined Louis Harris who was in his early career been accused by his critics of using his polls to promote candidates – notably John F. Kennedy in his 1960 presidential race – for whom he worked as a campaign strategist.

RESEARCH
Thus the debate on whether pollsters are working for political parties is as old as the polling business.

In the same business, we have seen the emergence of research firms that collect data to inform social economic and political issues.

Various organisations employ different data collection methods.

One of these was Consumer Insight, which came up with what was known as target Group Index that looked at targeted consumer behaviour – to much success.

RESULTS

Led by Ndirangu Maina, Consumer Insight entered into business in 1998 but only came to political polling businesses much later.

In 2007 we saw various organisations conduct presidential opinion polls and predict how the nation would have voted and the state of play between the various political rivals.

But these polls were often criticised because of unsound methodology and deliberate intent to release to the public fabricated or predetermined outcomes.

“The glaring huge gaps between results of the different pollsters while they were polling the same presidential candidates and topical issues were suspect,” Patrick Mutahi writes in Jerome Lafargue’s book The General Elections in Kenya.

REGULATION

Mr Mutahi was right because one of the issue that has come out of polling business worldwide is its manipulative nature.

So chaotic is the sector that in 2011, Kigumo MP Jamleck Kamau moved a Motion in Parliament seeking the establishment of an Opinion Poll Control Board “for the regulation and conduct of opinion polls that are factual and adhere to the rule of law”.

But Kamau was accused of bringing the motion only because the opinion polls did not favour his political grouping.

“Opinions are held by people and whether we have opinion polls or not, every day in discussions and when people meet, they express their opinions.

"The moment you try to regulate and control those opinions, you are acting in the most undemocratic manner,” Mr Gitobu Imanyara argued.

In the end, Kenyans do not seem to agree on opinion polls. But it is because of the short history of mistrust.
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Nairobi has been hit by cholera and we seem to be back to the 1900 Nairobi when the town was hit by plague.

So dirty was the emerging town that rats dominated the dark alleys and Victoria Street (now Tom Mboya) was once described as a canal of thigh-deep mud whenever rain fell.

The Indian bazaar was then a haven of rats and since it was not drained properly it was regarded as the source of chronic plague.

SEWER SYSTEM
It is interesting that 110 years after the Bransby William Report of 1907 that had recommended the removal of Bazaar where plague had broken in 1906 that the City of Nairobi is witnessing, of all things cholera.

READ: Govt to roll out major clean-up to battle cholera

By then, the Commissioner of EA Protectorate, James Hayes Sadler, could easily blame the Railway Engineer, George Whitehouse, for the mess Nairobi was finding itself in when it rained and for the lack of sewer system or a place to put the “night soils”.

LOCATION
Why should Nairobi residents find themselves in the current state?

It could either be a historical or a political problem.

Historical because as early as 1900 the doctors were unanimous in condemning the site for the City of Nairobi, which they described as a depression with a very thin layer of soil or rock.

CLEAN WATER

The soil was waterlogged during the greater part of the year and the decomposition of animal matter was abnormally slow.

But it is also political because we have not managed our water systems properly – leaving millions of residents with no clean water.

READ: Clean drinking water remains elusive for many

Our water towers of Aberdares are also being depleted and nobody seems to care. That is where we are.