ACME Issue Brief

Opinion Polling
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F E B R U A R Y

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Yes, opinion polls matter even in Uganda

Introduction: What is the Issue?

Unlike in countries such as the United States, opinion polling (an assessment of public
views obtained by questioning a representative sample) is not a regular activity in
Uganda. Every time findings of an opinion poll are released, especially toward and during the campaign season, some commentators trash them. They argue that a poll on politics in Uganda cannot be credible because people, especially rural folk, live in fear of offending the government and so they will not reveal their actual answer to a question.
They fear retribution. For different political camps, a finding that shows an opponent
leading means the pollster was bribed.
Now, it happens that all polls in
Uganda over the years, including
during the current election cycle,
have shown long-serving President
Yoweri Museveni leading. His political opponents say he is ruining
the country, undoing all the good
he did in the early years after coming to power in 1986. Therefore,
they say, there is no way he could
be in the lead in any credible poll.
For opinion polls to even begin to
make sense, critics further argue,
they must be conducted at regular
intervals and the country must be democratic enough that people enjoy their civil and
political rights without any undue hindrance. That not being the case in Uganda, no opinion poll is accurate even in the slightest. Also, some people confront pollsters wondering
how the poll results can be accurate yet they have never been interviewed. Besides these
accusations and concerns, journalists have also not covered poll results in particularly
illuminating ways.
This state of affairs inspired ACME to convene a breakfast meeting for journalists to hear
from two key pollsters in Uganda just as the campaign season was beginning to pick
steam. The meeting took place in Kampala on 3 September 2015 with experienced Ugandan pollsters Francis Kibirige (Afrobarometer) and Patrick Wakida (Research World International). The interaction, part of ACMEs Evening With monthly series of talks
funded by the Democratic Governance Facility, turned out to be an introductory class in
opinion polling.

Why Opinion Polls?

If done correctly, polls matter

because they reflect public
opinion accurately. Even in
Uganda opinions matter because everybody has an opinion. Conducting opinion polls
establishes a countrys opinion base, which can be used
to measure the swing or
changes over time. In other
words, a poll represents public views at a specific period
in time. Those views could
change, especially in politics
(say as campaigning proceeds). Good opinion polls
measure something: there has
to be something, say political
campaigns, going on. A poll
is bitter truth and no one
wants to be told they have
bad breath, said Dr Wakida.
According to Dr Wakida, the
only politician who has used

OP INION

P OLLING

Research World International

poll results seriously is Mr
Nandala Mafabi in his 2012
contest for the FDC presidency
against Gen. Mugisha Muntu.
He was shouting in public, but
his people were benching my
data at my office and if he had
been given three or so more
days, he would have defeated
Muntu. He added: Polls allow
politicians to see the strength of
opponents, say through a question that asks: why would you
vote X or Y?
Mr Kibirige said that ahead of
the 2011 elections, two Afrobarometer polls showed President Museveni winning reelection with either 66% (as at
November/December 2010) or
65% (as at January 20-30, 2011)
with a margin of error of +/-2%
despite having scored the lower

59% in 2006. The actual

results Museveni winning with 68% were a
point different. The elections were held on 18 February 2011. This kind of
result led Dr Wakida to
say that if indeed respondents fear to give an honest opinion during a poll,
then that fear should carry
through to the polling
booth where the voter will
fear voting a candidate of
his choice. Research
never lies, he said.
People will tell you near
the truth or the truth. So
the talk of fear could be
seriously exaggerated.

Conducting opinion
polls establishes a
countrys opinion base,
which can be used to
measure the swing or
changes over time. In
other words, a poll
represents public views
at a specific period

How polls are conducted

If people dont understand polls, it
follows that they will not appreciate (understand) the findings. So,
how are polls conducted? Key
questions include who was interviewed, when it was done, where it
was done.

we do a poll, we sample, we dont

do a census. A sample is a small
unit of the universe and a census is
the whole universe. When one is
unwell, a doctor may order the persons blood tested. Not all the
blood in ones body is examined,
rather a tiny sample is drawn and
Polls have a purpose for which
tested. In an overwhelming numthey are conducted and that purber of cases, the sample returns
pose must be clear. For example, in good results i.e. the cause of the
December 2014, the International
ailment is identified. Thats how
Republican Institute carried out a
opinion surveys work in terms of
survey in Uganda to capture citi- sampling.
zen views leading up to the 2016
elections.
Random sampling is a closely related
issue. Random sampling means
Questions are key. The order of
that everyone in the target populaquestions (questionnaire design)
tion has an equal chance of being
determines a great deal the quality selected. Said Dr Wakida: If I came
of answers a pollster gets. Are the in here, I cant say I want to interquestions simple, relevant, direct? view Bernard, but rather only men
with beards, or only men with
Does one section logically lead to
short sleeve shirts. There has to be
the other? Order has impact on
a clear pattern. If you get people to
how respondents answer. A good call into a radio station, thats not a
poll is one where various questions poll because it is skewed toward
measure the same thing, one ques- those with phones, those who listion checking the other, as it were. ten to you, those who have charged
Given the Uganda context, quesphones, those who have credit on,
tionnaires have to be translated
etc.
into different languages. Questionnaires also must be pre-tested and Lastly, the sample should be based
interviewers trained. Research
on census figures so that the reWorld International trains intergions with the highest population
viewers for up to four days, and
have more respondents in the samthen deploys them according to
ple. See the IRI methodology for
languages spoken around the
their December 2014 survey in
country.
Uganda.

tion) and non-sampling errors to

assure quality. If you interview
people in all of Ugandas regions
except one, you will have committed an error by skewing the poll
because you will have no idea what
people in the omitted region think.
Most errors are of the nonsampling type, errors that come
from logistics and management.
Generally, bigger samples have
cost, management, time and quality implications. For example, one
media house recently conducted a
survey of more than 6,000 respondents in eight days. This necessarily means there was little quality
control. For Research World International, every five interviewers
have a supervisor, have a quality
controller and its samples usually
range between 1,200-2,400 respondents.

There are also non-response errors

where, for example, one aimed to
interview 60 women, but managed
45. There are measurement errors
as well that result from how well
the data cleaning is done. There is
also interviewer bias, where interviewers cheat to return a result that
aligns with their position on some
issues. Thats why managing
them is important, said Dr
Wakida. At Research World, everything is digitized, for example we
upload our questionnaire on the
phone which is monitored by
Then there is the sample who did Errors. Pollsters make mistakes too. GPS.
the pollster talk to? Dr Wakida said They are therefore alert as to the
he meets people who tell him:
sources of sampling errors (the
A pollster must do reliability
Your findings differ from what I
deviation of the sechecks, meaning that where there
feel. How do you select those you lected sample from the true charac- are queries, he or she must go back
interview? You have never interteristics, traits, behaviors, qualities to the field to correct them.
viewed me. His response: When or figures of the entire popula-

How Journalists Should Report Poll Results

During campaign season polling,
reporters tend to go for the exciting
bit in the survey results about
which candidate is leading. That is
good, but reporters should also
analyze results and report trends.
We have done these polls before,
in previous years, said Dr
Wakida. Some questions were the
same in June 2010 as now [i.e. July
2015]. Thats how you add value.
Research World International has
all the polls it has conducted on its
website for free download. If you
want raw data, we will give you
after signing an agreement that
you wont distort it, Dr Wakida
said. A deeper analysis would, for
example, show that the voting patterns follow demographics: rural,
less educated people (the majority
in Uganda and also the majority

voters) vote the incumbent

party/president, urban, more
educated against; poorer people vote the incumbent party/
president,
richer
people
against. Afrobarometer too
has an online tool for journalists, which helps them make
quick sense of the data.
To establish other voting patterns in Uganda, reporters
will do well to pay attention
regions (north, west) and regional contexts.
Reporters should compare
opinion poll results on a single subject such as elections
by different polling agencies
(Afrobarometer,
Research
World International, Ipsos) to

Contact Us
The African Centre For Media Excellence
P.O Box 11283 Kampala, Uganda
Tel: +256 312 202 351
Email: info@acme-ug.org

figure out points of convergence

and divergence and what it all
means to the public.
Mr Kibirige said that it is helpful
for reporters to engage with those
who did the poll to get the details, and avoid newspaper headlines that are divorced from content. We need to find a professional way to bridge the gap. He
said that things like margin of
error, correlations, points of confidence even carry more information than what is reported,
which is the simplest i.e. Xpercentage prefer this to the
other.