NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 17 – Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the preferred Presidential candidate for the 2012 elections according to a latest opinion poll by the Steadman group.
The study indicates that even within Orange Democratic Movement, the Premier commands a 62 percent following compared to William Ruto’s 14 percent. According to the poll released on Saturday Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka follows the Prime Minister with 14 percent in public approval.
“Prime Minister Raila Odinga by 31percent is by clear the most popular candidate in terms of a possible presidential bid up from 19 percent,” Steadman research analyst Tom Wolf said.
“Uhuru Kenyatta comes in at third at 10 percent followed by Martha Karua at eight and William Ruto is fifth at seven.”
The poll further revealed that most Kenyans have little confidence with the government as many are dissatisfied with its performance.
According to Mr Wolf, the media retained its usual ‘most trustworthy institution’ though its ratings fell from 69 percent last year to 57 percent this year.
“The Speaker follows the media in trustworthiness while the government comes last at six percent,” he said.
A sample size of 2,005 respondents aged 18 and above was drawn to achieve a 35:65 urban to rural ratio. The maximum margin of error attributed to sampling and other random effects of this poll’s sample size is +/- 2.2 percent margin at 95 percent confidence level. Mr Wolf said that the survey was conducted in 53 administrative and geographical districts in Kenya.
The interviews were done at household level. The households were selected using the systematic random sampling procedure.
“Household interviews are preferred because they allow for pure random sampling ensuring full representation of the various demographics and also for quality control,” he said.
These face-to-face in-home interviews were preferred because they allowed for further probing as respondents have more time to respond to questions as compared to street interviews.
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