Going by the first week of the Mass Voter Registration (MVR) exercise, President Uhuru Kenyatta has taken an early lead as traditional perceived strongholds of the Jubilee Party recorded impressive numbers compared to those of the opposition.

According to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) figures, President Kenyatta’s Central region recorded an impressive 139, 876 new voters in the first week of MVR translating to 87 per cent of the target.

In terms of target numbers, Central came in second only behind North Eastern which had 24, 006 new voters (92 percent of the target).

Deputy William Ruto’s home turf of Rift Valley came in third with 169, 371 new voters translating to 60 percent of the IEBC’s target.

The Coast region, a Cord stronghold was fourth with 95,681 new voters representing a 58 percent of the targeted mark.

Eastern where Cord Principal Kalonzo Musyoka hails from was fifth with 127, 580 new voters 57 per cent of the target.

However, Eastern also has a huge chunk of Jubilee Party supporters especially in Meru and Tharaka Nithi Counties.

Opposition strongholds

The bedrock of Raila Odinga's support base Nyanza came in sixth with 95,945 new voters representing a 48 percent IEBC target.

Nairobi region where the presidential vote tally was almost evenly shared in the 2013 elections came in seventh with 95,966 new voters representing a 48 percent target.

The home of the other opposition chiefs Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang’ula hail from came in last netting in only 75,193 new voters representing a 43 percent target.

The IEBC also indicated that there were anomalies in the voters register, with 128,926 voters known to have shared their identification details.

However, the IEBC Chairperson Wafula Chebukati downplayed the issue saying that the figure only represented  0.8 percent of the total number of voters in the database.

“The IEBC is working closely with the National Registration Bureau to clean up all the shared IDs, he said. Registration officers and ICT experts are doing a further clean-up,” Chebukati said.

IEBC Mass Voter Registration numbers and targets (Week 1)