*Says low turnout ‘ll favour Tinubu
An indigenous data intelligence provider, Stears, has predicted that a large turnout of voters at the February 25 presidential election will pave way for Mr. Peter Obi’s victory at the election.
The poll which the group said was conducted on over 6,200 Nigerians placed Mr. Obi of the Labour Party in the lead ahead of established candidates like Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party (NNPP).
According to the report, Mr. Obi secured 27 per cent of the over 6,200 citizens declaring their support for his presidential ambition, Tinubu had 15 per cent and Abubakar had 12 per cent.
However, 37 per cent of the respondents kept mute on their choice of candidates, a situation analysts say could upstage the outcome of the poll if their choices do not follow same pattern.
Stears stated that the APC candidate has however, the largest percentage of silent voters after the data intelligence provider assigned the undeclared voters to a candidate they were very likely to support.
Still, Stears noted that Mr. Obi had a sizable support base and that his election triumph depends on how many people came out to vote on the election day.
According to the poll, using a high turnout scenario, Mr. Obi would get 41 per cent of the votes, Tinubu 31 per cent and Abubakar 20 per cent.
“Even after including silent voters, Peter Obi holds a comfortable lead.
“In essence, the Stears electoral poll and prediction model affirms that Peter Obi is by far the most popular and desired candidate for the 2023 Presidential Elections,” Stears disclosed in its report.
It added: “Having said that, to get a more realistic prediction of the outcome of the race, we can apply the same high and low turnout scenarios to our model predictions.
“When we did so, Peter Obi once again emerged triumphant in the high turnout scenario.
“In the more realistic low turnout scenario, something significant happens: Tinubu usurps Obi,” the poll result stated.
“Tinubu would take the lead by 39 per cent, followed by Obi with 32 per cent and Abubakar with 22 per cent,” it stated..
Consequently, the Stears electoral poll added: “Peter Obi is Nigeria’s most popular presidential candidate and should win the presidential ticket as long as Nigerians follow through on their stated intent to vote.
“But, if voter turnout looks similar to 2019, then Tinubu will win the election.”
The polling group stated: “Our objective was to produce the most accurate and predictive
poll of Nigerian voters ahead of the 2023 Elections.
“To do this,
there were three things we needed to ensure.
The first is that our sample size is as large enough to be nationally representative.
:We achieved that: the Stears 2023 Electorate covers 6,220 respondents in total across Nigeria’s 36
states, making it the largest telephone-based electoral poll in Nigeria.
“Furthermore, the poll includes booster samples from strategic states to enable more precise national and state-level
predictions.
“The poll included 22 questions (on demographics, voting
history, top-of-mind-issues, religion, ethnicity, confidence in
INEC etc.), with an average time of 15 minutes per interview, and was conducted in five major languages: Hausa, Yoruba,
Igbo, Pidgin English and English.
“The second is that our sample mirrors Nigeria’s voter registration database (voters over 18 years). We used stratified
random sampling to ensure the sample is representative of the
voter register up to State Senatorial District.
“And as is best practice in polling, we weighted the sample by gender and
geo-political zone to ensure that the final data exactly mirrors the breakdown of Nigeria’s 2023 voter registration database as of January 2023.
“The third reminds us that not all polls are created equal. To be sure that the results of a poll truly reflect the underlying population, a pollster must ensure that everyone in the relevant
population has an equal chance of being selected.
“The best way to do this in Nigeria is via telephone polling, as roughly 80% of
adult Nigerians own a basic phone”.
