Digital Strategist, Dennis Itumbi, on Thursday, August 11, announced that the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) tallying center projected that Deputy President William Ruto would emerge victorious in the 2022 General Election.
In his provisional results, he indicated that Ruto was likely to beat former Prime Minister Raila Odinga by over 238,024 votes.
According to Itumbi, Ruto had amassed 7,158,108 votes ahead of Raila's 6,920,084 votes drawn from 46,136 polling stations which had submitted their Form 34As. Itumbi placed the country's total polling stations at 46,233.
"99.79 per cent Forms downloaded, compared, published and verified. A screen shot of the internal System. William Ruto: 7,158,108 (50.5%), Raila: 6,920,084 (48.8%). Meanwhile, we have opened up access to our Tallying Centre to media," stated the digital strategist.
A spot-check by Kenyans.co.ke, however, showed that the country has a total of just 46,229, not the 46,233 as indicated by the UDA tallying center.
According to IEBC portal at forms(dot)iebc(dot)or(dot)ke/#/, only 46,174 polling stations had submitted their Form 34As as of Thursday, August 11 at 4:00pm.
An official attached to the IEBC and stationed at Bomas of Kenya where the official presidential elections tallying is taking place also confirmed to Kenyans.co.ke that the country has only 46,229 polling stations that operated during the 2022 General Election.
According to IEBC, around 60 per cent of the country's 22 million registered voters turned out to vote on August 9.
Provisional results obtained by Kenyans.co.ke at the time of publishing showed that the former Prime Minster was leading the race with 6,460,016 votes.
Ruto followed closely with 6,407,142 votes with Roots Party's George Wajackoyah and Agano Party's David Mwaure rounding up the top 4 with 56,688 votes and 29,097 votes respectively.
UDA Tallying Center
On Wednesday, August 10, Itumbi took Kenyans through the tallying process, showing how the party was receiving, curating and harmonising its results before the final tabulation that will be followed by a public announcement.
Itumbi stated that they had been monitoring the presidential polls from the time polling stations opened.
At the centre, he noted that UDA had access to the results as being received by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), and was using the uploaded Form 34As and 34Bs from each polling station to carry out its tally.
Ivy Nyawira Gichungo contributed to this report.
