Kevin J. Kelley
17 January 2008
Washington, DC — A US organisation that monitored Kenya's December 27 elections has said it will not release results of the exit polls they conducted during the voting.
The head of the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI) that monitored the General election said on Tuesday that his non-governmental organisation will not be releasing the poll results of voters' candidate preferences because the data is incomplete.
IRI president Lorne Craner further explained that publishing exit-poll figures that are "incomplete and very likely inaccurate would have been irresponsible and dangerous given the situation in Kenya."
Prof Joel Barkan, a member of the IRI monitoring team, said at a forum last week in Washington that the institute's exit poll showed opposition candidate Raila Odinga with a 49-41 percent lead over President Mwai Kibaki.
Those figures were apparently based, however, on survey data from only some parts of the country. Polling experts caution that a more representative sampling could show results significantly different from those cited by Prof Barkan. But they also say that well designed and properly conducted exit polls can produce accurate indicators of voters' election-day preferences.
Speaking at the same Washington forum via a video link from Nairobi, Kenya National Human Rights Commission (KNHRC) chairman Maina Kiai urged that pressure be put on IRI for release of the exit poll.
But an IRI spokeswoman refused to say on Wednesday whether the institute would ever publish the exit-poll figures. She also would not indicate how many reports from poll-takers around the country still have not been forwarded to IRI officials. And the institute further declines to comment on the numbers mentioned by Prof Barkan.
The IRI exit poll was financed by the US Agency for International Development and conducted in conjunction with the Nairobi-based polling firm, Strategic Public Relations and Research.
In a January 2 comment on the conduct of the elections, the IRI monitoring team in Kenya cited "irregularities" in the vote tabulation process and accused the Government and the Electoral Commission of Kenya of having "failed" in their responsibilities to the Kenyan people.
The IRI delegation did not indicate who it believed had won the December 27 election.
A Kenyan organisation also carried out an election-day exit poll that it is likewise declining to release due to what it says are incomplete returns from the field.
The Institute for Education in Democracy says on its website that it has received exit-poll data from 137 of the country's 210 constituencies.
Early results of the Kenyan institute's exit poll showed President Kibaki leading Mr Odinga by a margin of 51.3 percent to 39.6 percent, according to a December 27 Reuters report. But those results were based on figures from only 273 of the country's 27,000 polling stations.
A posting on the institute's website says "the presidential exit polls will be made available once data analysis is completed. A comparative analysis of the exit polls with the actual election results will also be made available."
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