Polling research firm InfoTrak has come out to explain why it deleted an opinion poll on twitter that showed Rigathi Gachagua had won a deputy presidential debate against Martha Karua.
According to InfoTrak chief executive officer Angela Ambitho, the poll was deleted because they felt that it had been infiltrated by bots. Ms. Ambitho said that her twitter team monitored accounts of those who were casting votes and realized that many of these accounts were not genuine.
“When we did this Twitter poll we realized there were bots and we decided to pull it do. A Twitter poll is not scientific but it can give a gauge of what Twitter users think,” she said.
She disputed allegations that the poll was pulled down because one of the debaters, Rigathi Gachagua, was winning.
“It does not mean we pulled it down because someone was winning it had been compromised. Social media polls can’t be termed as a scientific poll,” she said.
“We will be running another poll and unlike the Twitter one which was compromised this poll will be scientific. So we will select participants randomly and we don’t risk a case where one person votes more than once,” she said.
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Research firms in Kenya that conduct political opinion polls have lately been facing accusations of taking sides in the presidential political contests. They are alleged to be on payrolls to influence political outcomes by portraying candidates as popular. These firms have however denied these allegations.
In the highly publicized debate Rigathi Gachagua who is the deputy presidential candidate on a UDA party faced off with Martha Karua who is the deputy presidential candidate on an Azimio ticket. Gachagua is the potential deputy to William Ruto while Karua is the prospective deputy to Raila Odinga in the event electoral victory.