Raila leads the pack with 51 days to poll

Raila to beat Jubilee’s Uhuru in first round, says new poll

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By ISAAC ONGIRI iongiri@ke.nationmedia.com  ( email the author)

Posted  Saturday, January 12  2013 at  00:30

In Summary

• Election survey shows the Prime Minister is ahead of the pack with 51 per cent against Mr Kenyatta’s 39 per cent
• Survey says Cord coalition of PM and Kalonzo will beat Jubilee in the first round; Uhuru and Ruto to launch their campaign for top office today

Prime Minister Raila Odinga will secure a first round victory if the presidential election was held today, says a new opinion poll released on Friday.

The poll by Infotrak Research shows Mr Odinga of the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (Cord) would have garnered 51 per cent against Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta of Jubilee Coalition with 39 per cent of the votes.

It means the Cord team is running 12 percentage points ahead of the Jubilee coalition.

The findings came only 51 days to the General Election, a period within which political parties are expected to launch major campaigns that could tilt the balance in their favour.

The latest poll, conducted between December 28 last year and January 2, did not capture the impact of the official launch of Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi’s presidential campaign and the move by New Ford Kenya leader to join the Amani coalition.

The poll showed that the UDF leader would have tied at three per cent with Mr Peter Kenneth of the Eagle coalition.

Narc Kenya’s Martha Karua and her Restore and Build Kenya counterpart James ole Kiyiapi would have trailed with 0.3 per cent and 0.1 per cent respectively.

According to the poll, Cord is the most popular coalition with 49 per cent of the respondents supporting it. Jubilee enjoys 40 per cent of the support followed by UDF that commands three per cent.

Mr Kenneth’s Eagle coalition enjoys two per cent of the national support.

Mr Odinga’s popularity represented a massive jump in ratings compared to recent opinion polls.

In December, the same pollster projected that the PM’s pairing with Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka would have won with 47 percent against a combination of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto’s 41 per cent.

But in November, Synovate opinion poll showed that Mr Odinga was leading with 33 per cent against Mr Kenyatta’s 26 per cent.