PREVIEW
Latest TIFA opinion poll puts support for Ruto at 24% ahead of next year’s elections making him vulnerable if the opposition alliance holds together
Wins for President William Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance in three by-elections on 14 May look like strengthening his case for a second term next year, but the numbers suggest that the situation is more nuanced.
However, while the results in county assembly seats in Samburu and Elgeyo Marakwet saw overwhelming UDA wins, the result in Narok’s Emurua Dikirr constituency by-election was closer than expected even if the UDA's David Keter was elected with more than 18,000 votes.
The Democracy for the Citizens Party set up last year by Rigathi Gachagua, impeached in October 2024 after falling out with Ruto, took 10,760 votes in a seat where the defeated candidate in 2022 had been Keter himself. Standing as an independent against the UDA’s Johana Ng'eno, who died in a helicopter crash in February, Keter won more than 14,000 votes in 2022.
Though the DCP is yet to win any seats, Gachagua, who was in the United Kingdom last week to launch the DCP’s diaspora movement, has built a party that is consistently picking up hefty vote shares in central and Rift Valley seats.
Even so, Moses Kuria, the combative former trade cabinet secretary and advisor to Ruto, says that the results are proof that the president can be re-elected in August 2027 without the support of the Gikuyu vote in central Kenya. Although Narok County’s six constituencies broke 52% to 47.2% for Raila Odinga over Ruto in the 2022 presidential election, the UDA's David Keter was comfortably elected with more than 18,000 votes in the Emurua Dikirr constituency by-election (AC Vol 66 No 24, Ruto holds the parties together).
Kuria’s thesis could well be borne out. Even if the UDA were to collapse in the central counties, the Orange Democratic Movement’s leadership appears determined to form a coalition with Ruto despite major divisions within its ranks, and even if it does not secure the deputy presidency for an ODM candidate. That, Ruto hopes, could deliver the vote to him in western and coastal Kenya.
But his coalition, though undeniably broad, is also shallow (AC Vol 64 No 21, Ruto's reshuffle rewards the technocrats).
A survey by pollsters TIFA, also published on 14 May, suggests that Ruto will win a second term but that he would be comfortably beaten if Kenya’s opposition parties united behind a single candidate against him.
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