By Charles Kanjama

Ironically, it unclear who first coined the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” to refer to the ease that statistics can be bent and tortured to justify any hypothesis, especially in socio-economic research.

Recently, two Harvard professors linked to Africog released results of an exit poll claiming that Uhuru and Raila both got 40 per cent of the vote.

But let us look at what IEBC tallies tell us to identify the fallacies that have become commonplace in our post-electoral analysis of the presidential contest. The total registered voters for Rift Valley were 3.4 million, equal to the registered voters in Western (1.4 million) and Nyanza (1.9 million) combined. The three regions had similar voter registration trends, at 74 per cent, 71 per cent and 76 per cent respectively.

Uhuru scored nearly 30 percent in two Kisii counties and overall 11 per cent in Nyanza, while Raila scored 22 percent in Rift Valley, aided by good performance in the Maa counties (about half in Narok, Kajiado, Samburu), in Turkana 68 per cent and cosmopolitan Trans-Nzoia, Nakuru and Eldoret.

Uhuru performed dismally in Western, his worst region, with only six percent of the vote. Overall, in the Raila-Uhuru race, Raila gained 1.3 million vote advantage in Nyanza, 0.7 million in Western, but suffered a deficit of 1.5 million votes in Rift Valley. The voter turnout was 88 per cent in Rift Valley, 90 per cent in Nyanza and 85 per cent in Western, meaning fairly good turnout all over.

Nairobi (1.7 million voters), Eastern (2.1 million voters) and North Eastern (0.4 million voters) were the toss-up regions, with the first two going to Raila and the last one to Uhuru. Raila’s advantage was 64,000 in Nairobi and Eastern combined, and his disadvantage was 76,000 in North Eastern. These three regions cancelled out.

Their voting patterns were expected and their voter turnout largely similar: 82 per cent in Nairobi, 86 per cent in Eastern and 83 per cent in North Eastern.

The remaining regions were Central (2.2 million voters) and Coast (1.2 million voters). Coast gave Raila an advantage of 450,000 votes, which raised his cumulative advantage to 1 million votes. This advantage was wiped out by Uhuru’s 1.8 million advantage in Central, helping Uhuru win by 0.8 million votes.

There was big disparity in voter turnout between Coast 70 per cent and Central 92 per cent. Raila performed better in 2013 than 2007 in Coast and Eastern but lost out big time in Rift Valley. The voter turnout in Central and Nyanza was similar, with three each of the six top voter-turnout counties from these two regions. Voter preference was also similarly hegemonic, with Raila surpassing 97 per cent in three Nyanza counties, and Uhuru passing 96 per cent in four Central counties.

Raila’s narrow path to victory required him to erode Jubilee’s vote in Rift Valley, or else push up his numbers in Nyanza and Western. The 2013 election figures are quite credible.

The expectation in 2017, from a long-term prognosis, is that if Jubilee’s dynamic duo keep together, they can only expect to improve their performance in several regions, especially Western (gaining up to half), Nyanza (growing the Kisii vote), Coast (recovering Kibaki’s lost vote), Rift Valley (creaming off more of the Maa vote) and North Eastern (turning the tables in Garissa and Wajir). Jubilee can easily deliver a Narc-type landslide in 2017, leaving Cord scrambling to maintain their Lower-Eastern hegemony.

Cord will need a casus belli to keep their coalition intact and prey on Jubilee’s weaknesses.

Their first hope will be to reap from any future fallout of the dynamic duo. If this fails, they must use the struggle for devolution and the perennial battle against corruption and bad governance to animate their coalition as they improve voter registration in their strongholds. It will be a tough task.

Jubilee will hope that Cord remains united, with Raila playing a key role in Parliament. There is nothing like a common rival to keep political friends together. Raila’s continued political engagement, or ongoing ICC trials, can become the single greatest factor in delivering a Jubilee landslide in 2017.

Yet Kenyan politics is too versatile for 2013 trends to sustain until 2017. After 1963 came 1966; 1982 disrupted 1978 and 2005 reversed 2002.

So don’t take my prediction to the bank; I will not be responsible if your savings get wiped out.

The writer is an Advocate of the High Court