KABATESI: Fraudulent pollsters anathema to democracy

There is a new rodeo in town — self-appointed pollsters.

Whereupon before pollsters were paid to filter public opinion (market surveys) on an issue, newly minted pollsters want us to believe they’re so public spirited they’re paying for the polls themselves. Of course, I know you can skew and sell poll results to recoup capital.

Interesting, because whenever we’ve a public good issue like who would continue to wear a mask despite government removing the must-edict, these pollsters are mum.

But when it’s an issue of who should lead (not who could be leading) on the presidential ticket, these pollsters rave with weekly polls. Begs the question, what’s in it for pollsters to bombard us with figures and percentages that defeat reality?

Yet polling isn’t all that bad. Robust public polling is a marker of a free society. It’s a testament to the ability of citizens’ views impacting policy on major issues.

But the truth is, if we were to poll the pollsters today, many of them would be found to be fake and their polling extremely fraudulent.  Recent results suggests that 'Kenyan' pollsters don’t know the differences between campaign and election polling. They present figures that reflect election results when they should be dealing with campaign performance.

The net effect is that such crooked presentation props up a candidate against others, hence, intimidating the opposing and undecided voter into a false choice.

 A false choice because crowd psychology ensures that such voters, afraid to be supporting a looser, will switch sides to be part of the winning side. Unfortunately, they will only be switching to a fantasy created to nub them.

Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population. A series of questions are asked and the generalities extrapolated in ratio or within confidence margins. Our pollsters rarely do that. You never know what the sample size represents – community population, voters in a given area or a segment of the whole.

Polling cheats like inserting the phrase “nationally representative” sample as a promise of a poll’s trustworthiness. But the term doesn’t convey any specific technical information or come with any guarantees. Surveys can be sampled and adjusted to represent the country on certain dimensions. So, any fraudster can make this claim about any poll, regardless of its quality.

We’re, therefore, lumped with results that suggests pre-profiled and selected respondents rather than a random assortment of clearly identified geopolitical spaces. Some 'clever' pollsters have a permanent respondent list of contacts.

These Kenyan variety of pollsters aren’t alone, save for the incestuous fact that they are owned by the subject of inquiry – the candidates in an election. In the 2016 US elections, there was a wave of proliferation of polls from firms with little to no survey credentials or track record.

America was overrun with fast and cheap polls, most of which made a preventable mistake: failing to correct for an overrepresentation of college-educated voters who leaned heavily toward Hillary Clinton. They presented a false sense of victory for Hillary.

Matter of fact, what we’re treated to in Kenya are called 'push polls'. This is a marketing technique used to advertise goods and services. It is most commonly employed during political campaigning, purposely to manipulate or alter the prospective and views of voters under the guise of conducting an opinion poll.

Push polls usually have no respect for the 'science' of opinion polling. Often, they aren’t looking for your understanding of an issue or knowledge of an event, but seek your acquiescence. They goad the target into accepting a false reality in the same manner a TV and radio audience or newspaper reader has no opportunity to question the efficacy of a product in a commercial advert.  

Recent polls fall into this category of push polls, and Azimio candidate Raila Odinga is the biggest beneficiary. This fact alone lends a veneer of falsity to the published results in as far there isn’t any real interpolation. Results have consistently shown that Raila is on the ascendancy, sometimes with a double-digit jump in 'impossible' regions.  

In these areas, Raila previously performed well only because he had support of key local community kingpins, who have since parted ways with him.  How, for instance, do you affirm that Raila still leads in Western and Ukambani despite the departure of those who made it possible for him to secure that support?  

It doesn’t help that Raila carries the unenviable label of an Uhuru project designed to ensure Uhuru succeed himself.

One purpose of such persuasions is to perpetuate the myth that despite the altercation with Amani National Congress party leader Musalia Mudavadi, Ford Kenya’s Moses Wetang’ula and Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila still rules the roost in their bases.

But the real aim attached to the polls is to demean these leaders’ influence, sow despair and doubt among their supporters. New converts can then be fished among self-doubters.

The greater impact of push polls is the negative impact on their status in their new home; Mudavadi and Wetang’ula may be denigrated for bringing nothing to the Kenya Kwanza stable, while Kalonzo will be ridiculed as a lonely Mr Journeyman easily manipulable. The goal is perfect; deny them credibility to marshal numbers.

But the opposite is equally plausible about push polls: Raila and supporters may sit pretty lured into victorious frenzy that they’ve already won and forget the ballots haven't been cast.

The trust deficit will not only linger within political circles. We’re easily descending into desecrating whole professions and sullying reputations under an ambitious clique of state operatives’ design to instal a malleable client for president.

What passes as opinion polls come in handy to create a herd mentality among voters. Like all designer outfits, not all fit perfectly. Raila may be the unanticipated antidote that wouldn’t fit.

(Edited by V. Graham)

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