Kenya's Election is Going to be Tight

With around 80% of the 9 million votes cast counted Kenya's election is too close to call. Both Uhuru Kenyatta (5 million votes) and Raila Odinga (4.5 million votes) are hovering close to the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off. However the difference between them is currently measured in fractions of percentage points. The margin of error created by the some 500,000 excluded votes is 3.3%.

Therefore the most likely outcome is a run-off between Kenyatta and Odinga delayed while the issue of the excluded ballots is tested in the courts.

While I appreciated that they're clearly already under a lot of pressure Kenya's Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) (or possibly one of the monitoring groups) need to rush out a preliminary report on roughly a 10% random sample of the excluded ballots. This report should explain the reason why ballots have been excluded. For example has a person simply spoiled their ballot by voting for more then one candidate or have ballots been excluded for more technical and therefore suspicious reasons such serial numbers failing to match? The report should also detail how the IEBC has been able to bring the widely reported 500,000 figure to a mere 53,000. That's because if questions like this are not formally addressed it is in the silence that rumours will start.

Oh and just to be completely unhelpful just as Kenya's election reaches it's tense conclusion the US is making a big show of burying two soldiers found 19th Century Civil War ship the USS Monitor. Of course the excuse they're going to use is that they had no way of knowing that Kenya's election results wouldn't be released on Wednesday (6/3/13) as scheduled.


18:20 on 8/3/13.

Edited at around 18:30 on 8/3/13 to add: Yes I've checked that again and the fact that the reported totals for the two main candidates (there are others) exceeds the total of votes counted is just one of the reasons why the result is going to be controversial. However assuming that all 14.9 million registered voters took part the error margin created by the excluded votes is 3.3%.

(Originally Posted on 8/3/13)