By Dr. Luchetu Likaka – Researcher and Political Analyst

I find the current wave of presidential opinion polls in Kenya analytically weak and politically overstated. They are being elevated beyond their evidentiary value and, in doing so, risk misleading both the public and decision-makers.

To begin with, these polls are conducted outside a meaningful electoral context.

Kenya is still far from the statutory election period, candidates are neither fully declared nor ideologically defined, and coalition architectures remain unsettled.

What is being captured is not voter choice, but momentary public sentiment shaped by economic stress and political noise.

Treating such data as predictive is methodologically unsound.

Poor Sampling Techniques

Further, the sampling and design limitations of these polls cannot be ignored.

Kenya’s electorate is structurally complex, marked by regional diversity, economic inequality, and varying access to communication technology.

Polls that rely heavily on telephone interviews and limited sample frames inevitably suffer from urban bias and elite over-representation, thereby excluding the very constituencies that historically determine electoral outcomes through turnout and mobilisation.

The presence of a large undecided voter bloc further invalidates any definitive ranking of candidates.

When a significant proportion of respondents have no firm preference, declaring “front-runners” is not analysis; it is speculation dressed as empiricism.

No serious political scientist would interpret sub-30 percent support as a mandate or a stable lead.

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Opinion Polls as Political Instruments

More troubling is the way opinion polls are increasingly deployed as political instruments rather than analytical tools.

They are used to shape media narratives, influence elite negotiations, and manufacture perceptions of inevitability.

This is particularly dangerous in Kenya, where elections are won not through early popularity metrics, but through coalition arithmetic, regional turnout, and last-mile political organisation factors that no opinion poll can adequately capture at this stage.

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No Credible Basis

In my view, the current opinion polls do not provide a credible basis for forecasting Kenya’s next presidential outcome.

They are premature, methodologically fragile, and politically instrumentalised.

Serious analysts should resist the temptation to confuse polling snapshots with structural political realities. Elections are not won in spreadsheets; they are won in the field, through strategy, legitimacy, and trust.

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Dr. Luchetu Likaka PhD is a Distinguished Consultant Criminologist and Sociologist, Boasting over 15 years of Experience in the Field. PHOTO/ Luchetu Likaka