Ipsos survey shows only 17pc of Kenyans support the opposition

Confidence in Kenya’s opposition is very low, according to a survey.

The survey by Ipsos Kenya places the confidence rating in the Opposition at 17 per cent, out of which only 7 per cent are Jubilee supporters and 37 per cent are Cord supporters.

The survey, conducted between July 30 and August 9, also assessed the confidence ratings of the Senate, the National Assembly Speaker, the Cord principals, the majority leader of the National Assembly and political parties.

Confidence in the National Assembly, National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi, National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale and senators is equally low, all with a rating of below 20 per cent.

The general rating of confidence in the National Assembly, according to the survey, is 14 per cent, 15 per cent for the National Assembly Speaker, 12 per cent for the majority leader, 22 per cent for the youth MPs and 19 per cent for senators.

MORE CONFIDENCE

The National Assembly Speaker and the House majority leader, however, enjoy more confidence among Jubilee supporters.

The researchers also examined the knowledge of respondents on their MPs, focusing on names and approval as well as the general performance of the current Parliament. According to the findings, a majority of Kenyans would re-elect their current MP.

The Ipsos’ 2nd Quarter 2015 survey, however, shows that more rural residents have knowledge of their MPs compared with urban residents.

Generally, at least 79 in every 100 Kenyans can correctly identify their local MPs and know them by name.

An interesting finding was that fewer urban residents — 69 per cent — know their constituency MPs by name, compared with rural areas, where knowledge of area MPs is high, at 85 per cent.

The proportion of knowledge of area MPs is higher in the western, eastern, central, northeastern and Nyanza regions, at between 81 and 89 per cent. Nairobi has a low of 59 per cent.

According to the researchers, this is a pointer to the higher level of interest in rural politics.

RURAL POLITICS

“This is evidently a reflection of two realities: first, that many urban-dwellers pay more attention to constituency-level politics in their rural home-areas (and perhaps also go to vote there), while others do not vote in the constituency in which they live in the capital, but in another of the county’s 17 constituencies,” they stated.

This could also be the explanation for the variations across Kenya’s other regions.

The survey also sought to compare the perceptions of Kenyans on the performance of the current Parliament and the previous one.

In this regard, the former Parliament, under the Grand Coalition Government, scores slightly higher, at 37 per cent, versus 30 per cent for the current one.

Fifty per cent of Jubilee supporters contacted through the survey, however, felt that the 11th Parliament has performed better, compared with just 23 per cent of Cord supporters who felt the same way. Forty-two per cent of Cord supporters felt it has performed worse.

Thirty per cent of the respondents who felt that the current Parliament was better than the previous one cited development, while 11 per cent cited leadership and nine per cent cited the implementation of the Constitution.

CORRUPTION MATTERS

By contrast, 28 per cent felt it has not performed as well in leadership and 21 per cent felt it has not done as well on matters of corruption.

A further 14 per cent felt it has performed worse on parliamentary procedure and 10 per cent felt it has failed on development.

According to the researchers, Ms Hilda Kiritu and Mr Tom Wolf, “what is evident is that Cord supporters are more comfortable with the Jubilee leadership as compared to the Jubilee supporters that are comfortable with the Cord leadership”.