PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: How Ripples Nigeria poll, prediction hit the mark

In the run-up to the just concluded presidential election, there were many predictions, and exit polls as to how Nigerians may vote, and who would emerge the likely winner.

In all of the predictions and exit polls, none probably came as close to it as the ones undertaken by Ripples Nigeria, one of the country’s fast emerging multi-media online news platforms.

The outcomes were near perfect of predictions for the presidential poll, lending credibility to pre-election inquisitions, reviews and analysis. The online survey, for instance, fell only one percent (1%) short of prediction.

ONLINE SURVEY

The online poll titled – Ripples Nigeria Poll – 2019: Who would you vote? – published on www.ripplesnigeria.com ran for several weeks, and was distributed across various social media platforms. In all, the poll reached about 909,463 people and was shared by 2,448 persons, even as it attracted over 29,000 comments on Facebook alone.

From the votes cast in that survey which stood at 18,989, President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) received a total of 10,360 votes representing 54.6 per cent, while Abubakar Atiku of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) got 7,815 votes representing 41.2 per cent.

Other contestants, together, attracted 814 votes representing 4.3 percent.

In the actual presidential ballots that took place nationwide on Saturday February 23, 2019, the official results as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) showed that Buhari secured 55.6 per cent of total votes cast across the country, while Atiku got 41.2 per cent of the votes, a near perfect match to Ripples Nigeria survey.

The other political parties which presented candidates for the presidential election, about 71 in number, collectively scored 3.2 per cent of votes cast.

See charts showing Ripples Nigeria survey matched against results declared by INEC

ELECTION FORECAST

Prior to the presidential election, the Editorial Board undertook an analysis of the likely direction in which Nigerians may vote across the 36 states, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Through careful and painstaking review, and analysis of several data, Ripples Nigeria attained nearly 98 per cent accuracy against the results as released by INEC.

We had predicted that Buhari would win majority votes in 16 states and the FCT while Atiku would come tops in 14 states, with 6 states posing as battle grounds that could go either way.

Except for Ogun State, and the FCT, the predictions were on target, and virtually went the way the Editorial Board had predicted.

Below is a comparative electoral map measuring Ripples Nigeria predictions against eventual outcomes as returned by INEC:

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