United Democratic Alliance (UDA) presidential candidate William Ruto has closed in on the Azimio flag-bearer Raila Odinga with just one month to the August 9 polls.
In the presidential poll released by TIFA on Monday, July 11, Raila's popularity in the country stood at 42 per cent ahead of Ruto's 39 per cent.
The gap between the two narrowed to three percent from four. In the poll released on June 18, Raila 's popularity was 39 per cent while Ruto's stood at 35 per cent.
Roots party candidate George Wajackoyah would be voted for by 4 per cent of registered voters if elections were held today.
TIFA Analyst Tom Wolf noted that the two front-runners maximized on the number of undecided voters which has reduced in the last one month. Notably, the numbers of those who gave no response dropped by half.
"Both Raila and Ruto have gained compared to the last survey because of the decline of those who said they were undecided from 14 to 10 per cent," Wolf Explained.
Ruto gained more support in the Northern Region (15 per cent), while lost most in the South Rift (33 per cent). The Azimio candidate gained the most backing in the South Rift (17 per cent) and lost two percent of the support in the Northern region.
In Nairobi, Odinga remains the most popular candidate at 58 per cent with Ruto coming in second position at 28 per cent while Wajackoyah has 4 percentage points.
The former Prime Minister was most popular in Nyanza and Nairobi while his Kenya Kwanza counterpart was the preferred candidate in Central Rift and Northern Regions.
Azimio remains the most popular coalition at 42 per cent against Kenya Kwanza (35 per cent). However, UDA remains the preferred political party in the country at 33 per cent followed by ODM at 26 per cent.
Notably, Roots Party was most popular in the Central Rift and Mount Kenya Region. Wolf further revealed that Wajackoyah ate more into the ODM party leader's votes than his UDA counterpart.
"A far as the Roots Party goes, you can see that more than a quarter of their current supporters say that they formerly supported ODM and only seven from UDA. We can make a tentative hypothesis that Wajackoyah is poaching or winning over more supporters from ODM than UDA," Wolf stated.
