AFROBAROMETER: Right poll, wrong people

According to the Afrobarometer survey, up to 96% of respondents want more transparency in elections, 89% want tighter law on campaign finance and accountability, and 74% want more time for determining presidential election petitions. 

The question the survey results point to, however, is what these responses actually signify. Did these participants, who mainly stopped at primary education level, understand the complex issues and implications of their responses? How effective was the translation? What could have been the response if they were asked open-endedly what reforms in elections accountability they want without being asked simply to agree/disagree? What is the significance of the “agree, disagree” answers? Are responses the same if respondents have more options; such as “neither agree/disagree” or even “I don’t know”?  Could the pollsters not have used another sampling strategy, say the stratified sampling method which focuses on specific target groups? Would this not have achieved more significant results and minimised the margin of error?

Francis Kibirige, the national coordinator of Hatchile Consult, the firm which did the survey on behalf of Afrobarometer told The Independent that they do not have many options. He said Afrobarometer does the survey in 36 African countries – not only Uganda to mainly track public opinion on democracy and governance.

“In order to do this well, we keep a certain core of questions intact so that you can be able to compare countries but also measure a country’s perceptions (of an issue) over time,” he said.

Kibirige says, however, besides the core questions, there are a number of questions that are included to measure country-specific democracy and governance issues.

“There are normally five questions to look at specific issues of the day which are either dominating discussions in the public sphere or will soon happen such that having public opinion on them is quite useful,” he said.

Each national partner team then drafts 15 or 20 themes that can be surveyed in the context of the country.

To further narrow the issues down, Afrobarometer then invites stakeholders from the media, government, business and civil society to contribute what issues they would want to be asked in the next round of surveys.

Then the team comes up with up to 30 questions which are sent to the regional core partner at the University of Nairobi who in turn trims the questions.

Kibirige says Afrobarometer has amongst its various committees, the Questionnaire Committee which has seasoned researchers and professors to review and refine these questions.

Upon that background, Kibirige rejects the opinion that research firms like Afrobarometer sometimes have an agenda and they tend to pinpoint issues they want to push through opinion polls.

But even then, he says, there is no research which is not guided by hypotheses because researchers will always have an opinion about an issue (hypothesis).

In the case of the age limit of the president, for instance, the issue is that Uganda has a president who is more popular, than his government or any other institution in the country, Kibirige says.

“But we have a situation where in four years’ time; he will not stand again going by the current constitution.

“So, although on the other hand, we would like to respect the Constitution, to disqualify someone on account of their age when they are still able to perform is discriminatory.”

“We wanted to find out what people think,” he says, “Afrobarometer simply does the research, does the analysis, presents the data out there and it is up to whoever wants to use it for their programmes.”

What people think

In the end, according to the survey, eight in ten Ugandans are in favour of a national dialogue to resolve the current political standoff following the 2016 elections. They also favour proposed reforms to improve elections and Parliament.

It also found that only 34% of Ugandans believe last year’s election was “completely free and fair” but 83% of Ugandans still support regular, open, and honest elections as the best way to choose their leaders.

Asked to either say “agree” or “disagree” for each of the following statements: (a) the disagreements over the 2016 elections highlight the need for a national dialogue, 84% of the respondents agreed; (b) for the sake of national unity, losing candidates should accept election results, 82% said they agree; (c) to reduce financial burden, reduce number of MPs, 79% agreed with the statement. Up to 74% of the respondents also said MPs should be facilitated to acquire personal cars instead of free-car giveaways while 66% of the respondents want the president to stop appointing MPs to Cabinet in order to safeguard their oversight role.

Almost 10 in 10 respondents (96%) said improving transparency during vote tallying, transmission, and declaration would help; 92% said they want the authorities to come up with measures that discourage use of forged qualifications and 89% said they want electoral officials individually held accountable.

The respondents were also asked to respond to the statement that the electoral law stopping any person older than 75 years from running as president in Uganda should be maintained and 75% agreed that the age limit should be maintained while 24% said that particular clause in the Presidential Elections Act is discriminatory and should not be allowed. Only 1% of the respondents did not know or refused to respond.

In spite of challenges, Afrobarometer’sfindinds are respected because it remains the leading pan-African, non-partisan research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, and economic conditions in Africa. It has been producing influential surveys for 25 years. Its main funders are highly reputable. They include the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and Department for International Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. Others are the Institute for Security Studies (South Africa), the United States Institute of Peace, Transparency International, the  Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Duke University, and China Research Center.

Hippo Twebaze, a political and public policy analyst also says he may not be familiar with how pollsters frame the issues but if one doubts the reliability of Afrobarometer’s opinion polls, one needs to look at the pattern of their findings, particularly on elections in previous rounds.

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