Report by Mudasir Opeyemi
The poll conducted by NOI Polls Limited and commissioned by Anap Foundation showed that Peter Obi leads Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC); Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP).
This was disclosed in a statement signed by its founder, Atedo Peterside and released via its website on Wednesday.
The result of the poll, which was concluded in the early December, showed that 23 percent of respondents proposed to vote for Obi if the election was held at the time of the poll, while Tinubu got 13 percent.
Atiku came third with 10 percent, while Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with two percent.
“Mr. Peter Obi’s 10%-point lead at this stage is significant, but not sufficient to separate him from a leading pack of candidates scoring 13%, 10% and 2%,” Atedo Peterside said in the statement
“Undecided voters and those who prefer not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 29% and 23%, respectively.
“The gender split of undecided voters shows that 38% of women are undecided versus 21% of male voters.
“This result was polled from 1,000 respondents; after which Anap Foundation conducted similar polls with a 2,000 and 3,000 respondents sample size, the difference in the results was not significant”
According to the breakdown of the poll,in the North-Central, the poll places Obi in the lead with 24 percent, followed by Tinubu with nine percent, Atiku with eight percent, while Kwankwaso had one percent.
“In the North-East, Atiku leads with 23 percent, Tinubu with 15 percent, Obi has eight percent, and Kwankwaso has two percent.
“In the North-West, Atiku is top with 17 percent, followed by Tinubu with 15 percent, Obi with 11 percent, and Kwankwaso scored 6 percent.
“In the South-East, 50 percent of the voters chose Obi, Tinubu and Atiku had 1 percent each, and Kwankwaso did not have any percentage.
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“In the South-South, 46 percent aligned with Obi, Tinubu came a distant second with 9 percent, Atiku had 3 percent, and Kwankwaso got 1 percent.
“In the South-West, Tinubu came first with 22 percent, Obi had 15 percent, Atiku scored 4 percent, and Kwankwaso had 1 percent.”
According to the Anap Foundation,the percentage of registered voters and/or voters with their permanent voter’s card is as follows in each of the zones
“90% in the North East, 89% in the South West and 88% in the South South. The lowest voter registration percentages were recorded in the North Central with 87%, North West with 86% and the South East with 84%.
When asked if religion would affect the choice of respondents, data gathered showed that 15% of the respondents replied in the affirmative to religion influencing their choice of candidates but 81% on the other hand, responded that their choices were not being influenced by religion; in the same vein.
Ten(10)% responded in the affirmative to ethnicity affecting their choice of candidates while 86% responded that their choices were not influenced by ethnicity.
“Furthermore, the data summarizes the top five reasons why voters are more inclined to vote in the forthcoming elections, these include: – The need to tackle insecurity (35%), Economy (26%), Unemployment (10%), Poverty alleviation (7%) and Education (6%).
“71% of the respondents think the Presidential candidates should compulsorily participate in a televised debate and/or town hall meeting, with the debates/town hall meetings spanning across topics like their manifestos, competence checks, and personality recognition amongst others.
“It is worthy of note that 73% of those aged 18-25, 82% of those aged 26-35, 85% of those aged 36-45, 86% of those aged 46-60 and 82% of those aged 61+ responded that they would definitely vote in the coming elections. The age groups that expressed the greatest willingness to vote were those between 36-45 and 46-60 years,” the statement further disclosed
In the statement, the organisation said the December polls are inconclusive because the combination of the undecided voters and voters who refused to disclose their preferences, is enough to change the poll outcome.
“However, Anap Foundation has concluded that the trends are clear enough to establish the front-runners and so our subsequent polls will continue to concentrate on the 4 leading candidates only,” the statement added