Politicians eye IEBC's new voters numbers set for release today

juma chrispinus

February 21, 2017 12:21 PM

Political analysts and politicians have concurred in many occasions that tribe-riddled elections in Kenya are won or lost at the close of the registration period.

The release of aggregate data on the just concluded mass voter registration exercise will put in picture politicians on whether they have numbers to win or lose in the august polls.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is expected to give an update and subsequently release the results of a 35-day-long mass voter registration which ended Sunday.

The IEBC is expected to give a breakdown of how many new voters registered during the period this afternoon.

From the beginning of the exercise, the polls agency IEBC had targeted 6.1 million new voters by February 14, before a court extended the registration by five days, bringing it to a close last Sunday.

Political analysts and politicians have concurred in many occasions that tribe-riddled elections in Kenya are won or lost at the close of the registration period. The announcement of the statistics by the IEBC will set a new pace, owing to the fact that the politicians having less than 170 days to prepare for the August polls.

In a previous update to the country one week before the official end of the mapped duration for registration, which was then extended by a court anyway, IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati had said that Uhuru Kenyatta led Jubilee Party was already taking a lead in the figures, with a huge turnout experienced in his backyard.

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