As polling date approaches, turnout remains a wild card

In Summary

But one thing the people running the President’s campaign ought to be worried about is a dip in turnout to 50 per cent or the neighbourhood of that number.

President Museveni is running for re-election on February 18 and more than 400 seats are up for election to Parliament. While record numbers of candidates are running for Parliament; in reality only about 100 seats are competitive between the current parliamentary parties. A few of those will be scattered in inter-party skirmishes between the Opposition parties, and intra-party skirmishes in some parties, especially DP.

In the ruling party, after a wayward drift to the past where violence has checkered the results of past contests, wisdom seems to have favoured softer interventions, namely use of unrestricted campaign cash. The Democratic Governance Facility (DGF) is reporting that NRM is outspending its opponents almost 200:1 and these numbers probably exclude outside money raised by candidates from private sources such as bank loans, friends, family and business contributions outside the largesse of the parties.

Polling in poor countries such as Uganda remains unpredictable. Deriving a good sample of reliable voters is a challenge as Ugandans don’t openly discuss voting preferences. Questioning voters in person may include older voters, less women voters missing the notable gender gap in polling preferences. Contrary to popular myth that the digital generation is very small, 12 million Ugandans are connected to the telephone network and the proportion of these connections with access to data services is rising even though it is concentrated in urban areas and the metro-region.

Observers will be looking at one number that pollsters have completely missed. Who is most likely to turn out and line up on polling day? In 2011, 41 per cent or 5 million voters stayed home. In the 2016 election where reams of national ID cards remain stacked at district headquarters, this number is likely to rise? Pre-election violence and voter intimidation depress turnout, contributing to voter apathy.

Lower turnout tends to favour the incumbents. In the modern democracies, negative campaigns produce the same result. No one has captured whether financial inclusion – lavish campaign expenditures and bribery – improve turnout. If this data exists, no one has shared it yet.
Some districts are gripped by anti-incumbency. The Tororo belt has one of the highest anti-incumbent records in the country. Voters, by tight margins, routinely retire their MPs at each election. Fearless things happen here; it is probably one of the districts where Go-Forward candidate Amama Mbabazi is looking to shore up his ship.

There may be nuggets of interest here and there; political talk shows on radio have filled up thousands of minutes of airtime commenting on different issues. 2016 will also be remembered as the year presidential debates took off even though the incumbent stayed away.
But one thing the people running the President’s campaign ought to be worried about is a dip in turnout to 50 per cent or the neighbourhood of that number. That number will confound the worst fears of a minority president presiding over a minority government. Our neighbours Tanzania survived that sting in 2015 after controversial elections. Kenyan elections are turnout machines.

This number creates problems in the donor community, which has cooled off since 2011. The British have 70 per cent turnout, Germans vote above 80 per cent. Even the Americans routinely achieve 60-70 per cent turnout in presidential years. Being president of the majority of 50 per cent makes things very complicated as our “oil money” and other “funds” of the government are in clinical condition.

Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate. kssemoge@gmail.com