Inside the opinion polls that got it wrong

In the weeks leading up to the February 25 presidential election, most opinion polls predicted that Labor Party candidate Peter Obi would win the election and become Nigeria’s next president.

But when the votes were tallied and tallied by INEC after the election, supporters were nervous and pollsters began to experience a sense of déjà vu. More ballots were ticking to Bola Tinubu, now the president-elect, than the polls have projected.

No fewer than nine polls have projected Mr. Obi to replace President Muhammadu Buhari in May. Only three public opinion surveys indicate that Mr. Tinubu’s ruling party candidate will win the election.

However, Mr. Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos State, was declared the winner of the election after securing 8,794,726 votes. Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) got 6,984,520 votes, while Mr. Obi of the LP came third with 6,101,533 votes.

However, Messrs. Atiku and Obi contested the election results and initiated a legal challenge.

Although the true picture of the pre-election polling performance is more nuanced than depicted, analysts say Mr. Tinubu’s strength is not fully accounted for in many, if not most, opinion polls.

What was accurate in the pre-election survey was that the polls predicted a three-horse race. That did not change as each of the three main candidates won in the 12 states of the federation.

The polls are wrong

In the third and final poll sent by the ANAP Foundation and released on February 15, NOI Poll said Mr. Obi leading with 21 per cent of voters willing to vote for him; 13 percent said they voted for Mr. Tinubu, while 10 percent agreed with Atiku.

However, a total of 53 percent of respondents were undecided or refused to answer. This led some people to criticize the foundation and its research methodology, but the organization said that the methodology used by NOIPolls is very similar to the “same” methodology used in previous presidential polls in 2011, 2015 and 2019.

“In all the past presidential polls, the front-runner identified by our Polls ended up winning the election, regardless of the relatively large percentage of voters who were undecided and/or refused to indicate who their preferred candidate was,” ANAP said. .

The foundation published two recent polls September and December showed the Labor Party candidate as the preferred candidate while admitting that undecided voters could tilt the result.

The 2023 election results, thus, show that the 2023 polls were the first to be incorrectly predicted by ANAP/NOIPols.

Another poll done by SBM Intelligence for Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria projected that Mr. Obi will win 15 states and cross the 25 percent threshold in 25 states overall. According to the opinion polls, Atiku will take 11 states and get 25 percent of the votes in 27 states, while Mr. Tinubu will win in nine states and get 25 percent each in 20 states. The poll did not show a winner for Imo State. He said he was “not confident enough to call an election for any candidate.”

However, the forecast was wrong as the three main candidates all won 12 states during the presidential election. On the other hand, Mr. Tinubu is the only candidate who scored over 25 percent of the votes in 29 states. Atiku got 25 percent in 21 states, while Mr. Obi got 25 percent in 16 states.

The SBM Intelligence Survey polled 11,534 Nigerians and concluded that “Nigerians need a second round to definitively decide the next President.”

In the end, the election was decided by the first election. To return to the presidency in Nigeria’s presidential election, a candidate must win the popular vote and score at least 25 percent in 24 states and Abuja.

Prior to the SBM survey, Labor Party candidates were identified as “liked president” by almost 53 percent of participants in a survey of 1,008 Kwakol people released on February 13. Messrs. Tinubu and Atiku both less than 20 percent.

Later, a survey conducted for Bloomberg News by San Francisco-based Premise Data Corp said Mr. Obi was the preferred candidate to succeed Mr. Buhari with 66 percent of respondents. vote in favor from LP candidates. Earlier in September, Data Premises publish a poll where Mr. Obi was the first choice of 72 percent of participants. Messrs. Tinubu and Atiku are far behind in the Premise poll.

In the same vein, a survey of 2,000 people published by Nextier showed that Mr. Obi has the brightest probability with 40.37 percent. Atiku PDP got 26.7 percent, followed by Mr. Tinubu with 20.47 percent.

A survey by Political Africa Initiative (POLAF) and BusinessDay found something entirely different and projected PDP will win the presidential poll.

“Atiku secured 38 percent as the preferred candidate, followed by Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who got 29 percent, while Obi got 27 percent to take third place. Rabiu Kwakwanso of the New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) was fourth with only 5 percent of the total vote,” the poll predicted.

None of the above-mentioned polls are on the nail as shown by the election results.

The survey got it right

A survey by Stears predicted victory for Mr. Obi in the event that a large number of Nigerian voters turned up to vote. The polls show that Mr. Tinubu will win in a low voter turnout scenario. Voter turnout in the election was below 30 percent, the lowest in Nigeria’s history, and the results showed the validity of the Stears poll.

In the final results of the election, Mr. Tinubu scored 37 per cent; My heart is 29 percent; Mr. Obi 25 percent and Mr. Kwankwaso NNPP got 6 percent.

Fitch Solutions Country Risk and Industry Research in its report on the election predicted Mr. Tinubu’s victory but also did not rule out the possibility of an “upward” run-off.

Fitch said the election was usually between the APC and the PDP, the vote would be a three-horse race for the first time since Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999 because of Mr Obi’s popularity, “especially among Nigeria’s urban and wealthy voters.”

Mr. Obi’s campaign generated a momentum that many people did not expect. But the ruling party and the main opposition, the PDP, have denied their popularity as they say they cannot win on February 25. He said Mr. Obi’s supporters were only on social media and the appeal was too widespread across the country to give him victory.

After the election, Atiku maintained that Mr. Obi could not get the constitution deployment is required should be announced by the president.

Mr. Obi won 12 states in the contest (five states in the South-East; three in the South-South; two in the North-Central; one in the South-West, and the FCT). They also got 25 percent in only 16 countries.

“Yes, I agree that he (Peter Obi) took our votes from the South-East and South-South and that will certainly not make him the president. You all know that to win the presidential election in Nigeria, you need votes from everywhere,” Atiku said at the post-election press conference.

Finally, Dataphyte Research conducted a “state-by-state truth statistics,” which involved “analyzing past voting patterns, voter turnout, voter preference homogeneity, religious homogeneity index, etc.” and “found the current scenario to be the same as in the 2015 Election. “

The media company projected that Mr. “Tinubu will win the popular vote and will be the only candidate who can meet the criteria of a minimum distribution of 25 percent of votes in two-thirds of the 36 states and the FCT.

The organization says there is no need for a run-off election. The polls are right.