With just few weeks left to the presidential election in Nigeria, we are patiently waiting for what many perceive as potentially the most keenly contested elections in the history of Nigeria, various media platforms have already started conducting different online opinion polls to sample the acceptance of the two leading presidential candidates - President Goodluck Jonathan of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Maj Gen Muhammadu Buhari (rtd) of the All Progressive Congress (APC).
Opinion Poll?
An opinion poll is a scientific survey designed to measure the views of a specific group — for example a country's electors (for most political polls)
In Nigeria, opinion polls have been conducted online by different news websites and a popular TV station, and Gen Muhammadu Buhari of the APC has defeated PDP's President Jonathan convincingly in most of the polls.
Sahara Reporters poll
In the poll conducted by Sahara Reporters, in October 2014, out of the 15,435 votes, Buhari got 12,246 votes which represented 79% of the votes, while Jonathan could only manage 3189 votes - 21%
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SaharaReporters Poll: 2015 Presidential Elections |
In what was widely perceived as a quick response to the first online presidential poll organized by Sahara Reporters, The Special Assistant to the President on New Media, Reno Omokri, activated a similar poll asking almost the same question posed by Sahara Reporters.
His poll, which was on his blog, “Build Up Nigeria” posed the question: “If the Nigerian Presidential election were held today, who would you vote for between President Goodluck Jonathan and General Muhammadu Buhari?”.
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| Buhari clearly leading in the poll organized by Reno |
Mr. Omokri’s poll began a day after Mr. Buhari declared to run, but unlike the one ran by Sahara Reporters, which was only for 24 hours, the one by Build Up Nigeria only closed suddenly after Mr. Jonathan was able to catch up with Buhari's lead.
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| Reno's poll after he mobilized support for Jonathan to catch up, after which he closed the poll |
Six hundred and nine voters, representing 2.29 percent of the total votes, were undecided.
Sources close to Mr. Omokri said he decided to hurriedly close the poll in apprehension that Mr. Buhari’s supporters might charge back online to vote the former head of state to an unassailable victory.
Mr. Omokri did not indicate the duration of the poll in the beginning and rushing to close it after the president got a slim lead is like changing the rules in the middle of the game, said Femi Falade, a development expert and school owner in Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State.
“That’s clear rigging,” Mr. Falade said.
Mr. Buhari had led in the polls for three days in what is seen as an embarrassing and unforeseen outcome for the president’s camp.
Several aides and loyalists of the president were mobilised extensively to reverse the trend in the last 24 hours.
Insiders in the president’s camp said presidency and administration officials as well as the top hierarchy of the governing Peoples Democratic Party felt “deeply embarrassed” by the direction of the poll and mobilised supporters of the president in and outside Nigeria to quickly get online and vote in his favour.
“Phone calls were made to supporters of the president in the Transformation Ambassador of Nigeria (TAN), Goodluck Support Groups (GSG), Gejites and other groups sympathetic to the president,” one of our sources said.
“They were being pressured to get online and reverse the results in favour of the president, even if means voting multiple times with multiple devices,” said the source who preferred not to be named for security reasons.
AIT Online Poll
The Africa Independent Television (AIT) network few days ago on their official website conducted an independent poll ahead of the February 14th presidential elections in Nigeria.
The poll was conducted by a T.V station that clearly showed her pro-Jonathan stance after running a documentary aimed at hurting the public perception of Buhari. The hour-long documentary, “The Real Buhari”.
Futhermore a copy of the documentary was made available online but rather than do damage to Buhari’s support, it seems to have further emboldened his supporters to troop online to vote massively for him, as Buhari also defeated Jonathan in the online poll organized by AIT (Africa Independent Television)
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| Result of AIT poll shortly before it was taken down |
In a press statement released to the media, DAAR Communications Plc, parent company of African Independent Television (AIT), alleged that their recent AIT Online presidential opinion poll was maliciously compromised in favor of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari.
DAAR Communications Plc. stated that the polls were doctored by hackers connected to the APC, and discredited the survey, which was taken down from the site abruptly.
"General Mohammed Buhari had taken a massive lead in the online poll being conducted by Africa Independent Television's website where he led President Goodluck Jonathan by 77% to 21% prompting the technical team of the AIT poll to conduct an integrity test on the results at midnight," the statement read.
AIT was however not able to provide convincing proof that APC supporters indeed rigged the polls. the proof they provided was proved to be doctored because it contained IP Addresses that did not exist and could not have actually voted.
Reno Omokri tries his luck again...
For the second time, The Special Assistant to the President on New Media, Reno Omokri, tried to test the popularity of President Jonathan as well as weigh his chances in the upcoming elections using the social media, and again, he was disappointed.
Using his Twitter handle, @Renoomokri, Mr. Omokri asked two questions.
“Who will be more tolerant of criticisms? Retweet to choose GEJ. Favourite for Buhari. Answer honestly with the fear of God! #WhyIwillVoteGEJ”.
“Who will respect the rule of law .Retweet to choose GEJ, Favourite for Buhari. Answer honestly, with the fear of God! #WhyIwillVoteGEJ”.
His first question got 212 Retweets and 2006 Favourites.
The second, got 130 retweets for President Jonathan and 1280 Favourites for Mr. Buhari.
Mr. Omokri stopped the poll after an early lead by the opposition candidate but continued tweeting with his #WhyIwillVoteGEJ hashtag.
He later deleted the tweets.
The poll was the second failed survey conducted by Mr. Omokri to burnish the image of President Jonathan.
Omojuwa's Opinion Poll
In yet another poll organized by popular Nigerian blogger and socio-economic and political commentator Omojuwa, he asked on his website, omojuwa.com
Who would you vote for President?
Muhammadu Buhari or Goodluck Jonathan
As at press time, out of the Total Voters: 3,486
Buhari leads with 3,287Votes representing 88% of total votes, while Jonathan is far behind with 454 Votes representing 12%
NigerianEye Presidential Poll
NigerianEye.com also sampled the opinion of Nigerians by activation a presidential opinion poll.
The online poll gave readers the opportunity to vote for the candidate they wanted to win the 2015 presidential elections.
The NigerianEye online poll has no room for manipulation as a participant can only vote once with a device - either through desktop, tablet, laptop or mobile device.
The transparency of the polling can be tested by participants who can see the result when they vote.
Any attempt to vote twice with the same device was not possible as only the current result was displayed.
As at press time, Buhari again is leading president Jonathan in the NigerianEye poll.
4248 people have voted for Buhari representing 73% of the total votes, while 1456 voted for Jonathan representing 25% of the votes.
The NigerianEye poll is still on for the next 9 days and you can CLICK HERE to vote
How reliable are online polls?
Polls have become indispensable to finding out what people think and how they behave. All polls are surveys based on samples drawn from parent populations. A poll's purpose is to make accurate inferences about that population from what is directly learned about the sample through questions the sampled persons answer.
- Online polls are not totally representative and do not always represent public opinion.
- Furthermore, The results of online polls are the opinion of the online population only and they are not a true representation of the majority of the people without internet.
- Nigerians living in the diaspora can vote in online polls, while they will not vote in the election proper.
- Another important factor is that readers below 18 years old can participate in online polls, whereas they cannot in the election proper.
- Another issue is double voting, a reader can decide to vote with different devices and ips in order to manipulate the results of the poll
Why opinion polls are very important
Despite all it's shortcomings and criticisms, online polling is still a very useful tool of analysis and a major source of public opinion.
The same way that a chef can judge the sweetness of a large pot of soup by tasting just one spoonful, providing that the soup has been well stirred, so that the spoonful is properly "representative", one spoonful is sufficient to know the taste of the soup.
Online opinion polls operate on the same principle: achieving representative samples is broadly akin to stirring the soup.
Also a chef could drink a large amount from the top of the soup, and still obtain a misleading view if some of the ingredients have sunk to the bottom. Just as the trick in checking soup is to stir well, rather than to drink lots, and by stirring well here, we have been able to sample the results of different online opinion polls.
The essence of a poll is to secure a representative sample, rather than a vast one, so consequently the representative sample will be the pointer to the vast majority.
In general conclusion, while online opinion polls may not be perfect, but they are a very important way of measuring public opinion. Why should The Special Assistant to the President on New Media, Reno Omokri be bothered if opinion polls were not important?
According to the British polling council, In most countries where poll results can be compared with actual results (such as elections), well-designed polls are usually accurate to within 3%, even if they occasionally stray outside that margin of error.
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