Barely a fortnight before the 2023 Presidential election on February 25th, Labour Party’s standard bearer, Peter Obi is still leading in the latest opinion poll released by an international agency, Bloomberg
According to a statement from the Obi-Datti Media office, the LP candidate emerged as the most popular candidate in six polls including the two surveys conducted by Premise for Bloomberg. Another poll released this week by Lagos-based media and data company, Stears predicted that Obi will win in the event of a high turnout, but lose to Bola Tinubu of the APC if participation is weak.
The latest poll from a San Francisco-based Premise polled 2,384 Nigerians from Jan. 26 to Feb. 4 via a smartphone app. with submissions selected from quotas developed by age, gender, and location across the country’s six geopolitical zones, the company said. Results were then weighted against the original quotas to ensure national representation.
Two-thirds of respondents said they intend to vote for Obi, a third-party candidate, in elections scheduled for later this month. The results of the survey conducted for Bloomberg News by Premise Data Corp. were published on Friday – 15 days before the vote to choose President Muhammadu Buhari’s successor.
Of the 93% of participants who said they’ve decided how to vote, 66% named Obi as their preferred choice. Obi scored a slightly higher 72% among decided respondents in an earlier Premise poll that was released by Bloomberg in September as the official election campaign kicked off.
About 44% of Nigerians have smartphones, according to the Alliance for Affordable Internet. Premise estimates that the access rate rises to 74% among the voting-age population.
Obi’s rival candidate Bola Ahmad Tinubu of the ruling APC came a distant second with 18% while PDP’s Atiku Abubakar came third with 10% among the decided voters.
▪︎ By Diran Onifade, Head of Media, Obi-Datti Presidential Campagn Council