Kenya: Ignore AI-Generated Image Used to Falsely Claim That Kenyan President William Ruto Has 80 Percent Popularity in Opinion Poll

26 May 2026
Africa Check (Johannesburg)
By Tess Wandia

Ignore AI-generated image used to falsely claim that Kenyan president William Ruto has 80% popularity in opinion poll

IN SHORT: A graphic of a presidential opinion poll claiming that president William Ruto has 80% popularity is going viral on social media in Kenya. However, this image has been created using artificial intelligence.

"Latest opinion polls are showing that Dr. Ruto will still win over his opponents," reads the caption to an image circulating on Facebook in Kenya.

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The image is titled "presidential polls" and features a bar graph that has assigned percentages to three individuals. The first, at 80%, is president William Ruto, second is 13% allocated to Nairobi senator Edwin Sifuna and former cabinet secretary Fred Matiang'i comes in third, at 7%.

The image features the logo of an organisation named Infotrack Research and Consulting in the top right-hand corner.

Ruto has faced unrelenting criticism which appears to have frustrated the head of state. Critics of Ruto have coined the slogan "Wantam", a deliberate misspelling of "one-term" to suggest he will serve only one term.

Kenya's next general elections are scheduled for 2027, when Ruto will be seeking re-election.

But is this opinion poll legitimate? We checked.

AI-generated image

We discovered a red flag when a search for "Infotrack Research and Consulting" instead led us to "Infotrak Research and Consulting". Infotrak is a Kenyan research firm known for conducting political opinion polls, governance surveys, market research and public sentiment tracking.

Using a common misspelling of an organisation's name, similar to typosquatting, is a tactic used to try to fool social media users.

We subsequently conducted a reverse image search and confirmed that the image was made using Google artificial intelligence (AI).

The image used to claim that Ruto has an 80% popularity rating in a presidential opinion poll should be ignored.

For tips on how to spot fake opinion polls, AI-generated images and videos, see Africa Check's guides here and here.

Read the original story, with links and other resources.
Africa Check is a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and in the media. X @AfricaCheck and www.africacheck.org

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