Here’s 1st of many infographics I’ll be creating to break down Uganda’s electoral commission data #UgandaDecides. While the inaccuracy in the data is statistically minor, it’s what it says about @UgandaEc attention to detail. After all, they have 1 job! There’s 8 candidates in Uganda’s 2016 election. The [correct] total number of registered voters = 15,277,197.
Evelyn Namara and Javie Ssozi combed through the Electoral Commision’s data and posted their methodology on Medium. We have been combing through for interesting bits of information that I could illustrate. The above keys in on the mysterious 20,000 voters on the register. As Evelyn notes:
From this data, please note that there are 7,249,394 registered male voters and 8,027,803 registered voters. When those two figures are added, they give a total of 15,277,197, however the EC vote count total adds up to 15,297,197 as listed on the website. This is when we began to dig deep and find out about the additional 20,000 voters that are unaccounted for.
20,000 ghosts voters make a huge difference, here’s why:
The winning candidate will need to garner 50% of the votes +1. The winner must collect 7,249,396 +1 votes to win. This means, the seven remaining candidates will split 7,249,396 votes amongst them. This is, highly, unlikely to happen as there are three strong candidates with a very strong followings each. Two with a realistic chance to carry half the votes. Based on this data, there’s a high probability of either 1) heavy rigging, or 2) an assured run-off between the top candidates.
Of course the above is only true if 100% of the registered voters actually turn up to vote. As pointed out by “Prof Moriati” on Twitter, more than likely, the turn out will be a little greater than the 59% in the 2011 election face off between Besigye and President Museveni. The outlier of course is the breakaway and embattled candidate, Amama Mbabazi. All three have garnered huge crowds on the campaign trail. It is worth noting that this is the first time that I have seen violence against Museveni supporters.
Javie, Evelyn, and myself will continue to crunch through the Electoral Commision’s voter registration for more data.
