How many days remain before the elections?

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

06 August 2017

Finally; the elections are here. Just two days to go; or is it? Today being Sunday and the elections coming on Tuesday: are we two or three days away?

Well, if we say that today is the first day, then Monday will be the second day and Tuesday the third. However, the question is not which day the election is but how many days are remaining.

Polling stations will open at 6am on Tuesday; so, assuming that you are reading this at 6am today, the are exactly 48 hours remaining. That is, two days. Thus even though Tuesday will be the third day from today, it is two days away!

A related question has been asked several times but the answer still perplexes many: why are we holding elections now – only four years and five months since the last time? What happened to the “five-year” rule?

The constitution says that a general election should be held on the second Tuesday in August IN EVERY FIFTH YEAR. It doesn’t say after five years or every five years. Thus if we count five years from 4^th March 2013 we end up at on 3^rd March 2018.

This tells us that we are in the fifth year and so we should rightly hold the election on 8^th August 2017. Now if we count another five years from Tuesday, we will end up on 7^th August 2022.

Now that day will be a Sunday. The second Tuesday in August 2022 will be the 9^th day of the month. But that will be outside the fifth year. Therefore, the correct day for the next general election after 2017 will be the second Tuesday in August 2021; that is 10^th August 2021.

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Several readers have asked why there are disparities in the results of recent political opinion polls. First of all, let me be clear: I don’t think these polls add value to democracy. In fact, they probably subtract something.

Many voters feel discouraged to vote for a candidate they think will lose. For that reason, opinion polls go against the principles of democracy when results are announced openly to the general public. They should only be shared with the candidates to help them decide where to put more effort.

But why do pollsters get it so wrong? I think it is simply because respondents are not honest! Politics is a sensitive subject and many will give the answer they think the pollster wants to hear.

Then there is the question of “how come I have never been interviewed for a poll and I don’t know anyone who has?” Typically, polls in Kenya interview about 2,000 voters out of the 20 million registered. That is, only one out of every 1,000.

Imagine a pollster going to the new Syokimau SGR station, waiting for the train to arrive from Mombasa and then picking just one passenger at random. If you were in that train, do you think you would be the “lucky” one?