Since the vote-counting process began on Tuesday night, August 9, after polls had closed, media outlets in Kenya have been presenting various preliminary presidential results.
Less than 5 million of the 14.2 million votes that were cast on Tuesday had been counted as of the second day of the counting, according to the startling statistics displayed on displays and websites from various media outlets.
At the time this story was published, Raila Odinga, the flag bearer for Azimio La Umoja, was leading with 2.4 million votes, closely followed by his primary rival, Deputy President William Ruto, who had 2.1 million votes.
Every media outlet has chosen Form 34As from the IEBC.
Source: Twitter
Before signing off the screen after long-hours of analysis and coverage of the electoral process, seasoned journalist Yvonne Okwara, in what appeared to suggest Citizen TV was ahead of other media houses, stated that punctuality and acute data analysis is what made their figures appear different from other media outlets.
“The figures you see on the screen will keep going up, some media houses are faster than others, some are efficient” Okwara stated.
Her sentiments were echoed by her colleague, Trevor Ombija, who said the station was well equipped to present figures more efficiently and accurately.
“Some people have more data analysts and have state of the art equipment,” Ombija noted.
On the other hand, Nation Media Group owned-NTV’s journalist, Daniel Mwangi, said the figures are based on the Form 34As they have been picking randomly from all constituencies.
“It depends on random Form 34As being used, but we can’t declare that these are the final results,” Mwangi stated.
The slow-paced figures were noted by Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman, Wafula Chebuka, during a presser on Wednesday, August 10, when he challenged media houses to move faster.
According to Chebukati, members of fourth estate should have tallied 97 per cent of the votes cast since that was the percentage of Form 34As that had been submitted to the Commission by the time of going to press.
“It appears the media did not prepare very well, the actual figures should be at around 97 per cent,” Chebukati stated.
The IEBC chairman said some 14,164,651 voters had voted on Tuesday, August 9, representing a 64.5 per cent voter turnout. This is out of 22.1 million registered voters.
According to Chebukati, the figure excluded voters who were identified using manual register in select regions where the KIEMS kits failed.
“From the kits that were transmitted, the voter turnout is 65.4%. This figure is will go higher once we compute the verification of turnout in areas that used manual voting. That figure will go up,” he said.
