Labour Party’s Peter Obi is still projected to win Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election, according to a new poll commissioned by ANAP Foundation.
The nationwide poll shows a significant lead taken by Mr Obi with Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) respectively trailing him.
Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) emerged as a distant fourth behind Messrs Tinubu and Abubakar.
Conducted in early December, the results showed 23 per cent of voters willing to vote for Mr Obi if the presidential election were to be conducted today; and 13 per cent proposing to vote for Mr Tinubu who fell in second place.
Mr Abubakar came third with 10 per cent and Mr Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with only 2 per cent of voters proposing to vote for him.
“Mr Peter Obi’s 10 per cent point lead at this stage is significant, but not sufficient to separate him from a leading pack of candidates scoring 13 per cent, 10 per cent and 2 per cent,” said Atedo Peterside, the president and founder of ANAP foundation.
“Undecided voters and those who prefer not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 29 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. The gender split of undecided voters shows that 38 per cent of women are undecided versus 21 per cent of male voters.”
The percentage of registered voters or voters with their permanent voter’s card as of December is 90 per cent in the North East; 89 per cent in the South West and 88 per cent in the South-South. The lowest voter registration percentages were recorded in the North Central with 87 per cent; North West with 86; and the South East with 84 per cent, the report said.
“The percentage of voters refusing to disclose the name of their preferred candidate has increased sharply from 15 per cent to 23 per cent making it difficult for us to ascertain if any of the candidates has picked up significant momentum between September and December 2023,” Mr Peterside said in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES.
The foundation had commissioned a poll in September that tipped Mr Obi to win the election with Mr Tinubu and Mr Abubakar finishing second and third position respectively.
When asked if religion would affect the choice of respondents, data gathered showed that 15 per cent of the respondents replied in the affirmative to religion influencing their choice of candidates but 81 per cent, on the other hand, responded that their choices were not being influenced by religion, the report added.
On ethnicity, 10 per cent of the respondents noted that ethnicity informed their choice of candidates while 86 per cent said their choices were not influenced by ethnicity.
