Kenya moving from traditional predictive analogy to app-based opinion polling

Imagine a real-time opinion polling system that aggregates sentiment and lets users compare data on one screen right from the comfort of your smartphone.

Well, with the astounding failure of ‘traditional polling’ methods in the 2016 US Election, the shock Brexit vote and a grave underestimation of Conservatives’ victory in the May 2015 British election, it is not surprising that Kenyan techpreneurs are daring to explore alternative ways of restoring polling credibility.

Polling has grown into an enormous and influential industry world over, and more so in Kenya as the August 8, election beckons. Rather than simply predicting the results, polling in a democracy helps to accentuate the wants of the populace in ways that an election cannot by giving an equal voice to everyone.

Vote Now Project Manager, Liz Njuguna, says the startup is pioneering a paradigm shift in local political opinion polling by tremendously expanding the representative sample using an online mobile application called Vote Now.

“Unlike traditional polling where random telephone numbers are generated and on average 2,000 people are polled, we are giving all Kenyans an equal opportunity to endorse their preferred candidate. If the sample is bad, the results follow… a large sample size is more representative of the population,” she says.

Grassroots, localised polling

Ms Njuguna told Citizen Digital in an interview that the ambitious platform encompasses all elective positions in the Kenyan electoral system including the MCA with an aim of giving localized predictions to voters in all levels.

“Aspirants at each level send their information to be listed on the platform complete with a pitch of their manifesto in video. Users are able to endorse their preferred candidates and track their popularity right from the application.”

She says the application, available on both Android and IOS under the banner name Kenya Decides, considerably eliminates the high cost of commissioning polls (Hiring researchers, data entry clerks) and in their targeting of a largely youthful population of smartphone users, it attempts to reduce youth voter apathy.

“As a politician if you want a poll to gauge your popularity, you have to commission one and pay a pollster. You realize those with lesser numbers are listed as ‘others’. If you don’t appear in a poll, it basically means you aren’t even a factor which is not necessarily the case. As such it is in their interest to be listed,” added Ms Njuguna.

Citing an analysis of 10 pollsters that predicted the outcome of the Brexit vote, Ms Njuguna observed that of the three companies whose figures were within the margin of error of the final result, two conducted their polling online.

Real Time

“We are simulating an election where every Kenyan who owns a smartphone has a chance to vote and the aspirants can mobilise their supporters as in the ‘Get Out And Vote’ phase. If you cannot mobilise your supporters to endorse you on the app, what makes you think you can mobilise them on election day?” she explains.

Asked how the system beats the credibility challenge that local pollsters have been accused of in recent times, Ms Njuguna says the difference lies in keeping it real-time and opening numbers for public scrutiny.

“What makes us different from other pollsters is that this is real time. You can gauge the mood of the people now. A user can unendorse an aspirant if after exposure to more information, they choose to support a competitor. You can see the moving numbers.”

She notes that the system, which she says is poised to become the future of gauging public opinion, guards against a user’s possibility of voting twice.

“The pollsters give you a percentage, it could be that only 10 people have been polled and they tell you a certain candidate is leading by 60%. Vote Now gives you actual numbers.”

Social Media Muscle Acid Test for politicians

Ms Njuguna says the system provides a unique way to gauge the authenticity of the strong following of seemingly popular aspirants on social media.

She says with projected success, it will become increasingly possible to expose aspirants with fake social media following.

“If you have 100,000 followers on Facebook, we’d expect the number of endorsements on the app to reflect the same. This will potentially answer why candidate X had a huge following on Twitter/Facebook and didn’t get a fraction of the votes.”

On whether the system is susceptible to inaccuracies in terms of aspirants mobilizing non-resident voters to endorse them on the app, she says: “There is always the margin of error in that no pollster can claim to perfect results. But chances are that people endorsing you as an MP/MCA are interested in localized politics and everyone is tied up in some grassroots politics.”

The real time app-driven polling paradigm operates under the premise politics is a game of numbers and that at the end of the electoral process, only one statistic counts; the tally. As such Vote Now poll results serves the purpose of simulating the popularity contest.

“This is a reflection of your popularity, and for politicians that’s important. We do not want to claim that this is a prediction of your result. We don’t want to predict the outcome of the election.”

Ms Njuguna observes that the platform offers aspirants an opportunity to gauge how effective their campaign communication is by studying the numbers.

While the bold move by the techpreneur to provide an alternative opinion polling system is laudable, the real benefits will be more verifiable in the long-run.