The tribeless tyranny of numbers: Mapping Kenya's 2027 voter universe

Like a broken record, let’s admit that our journey to the 2027 General Election is well under way.  The incumbent broad-based administration insists that there are still two years to go, and they are focused on delivering on the promises they made to Kenyans in their 2022 manifesto.  

Since using the term “opposition” feels like a contradiction (presidential system of government notwithstanding), the non-broad-based side of our political terrain is still a mixed bag; the talking point at this stage is “Wantam” with plenty of maneuvering (single candidate, joint platform etc) behind-the-scenes.

 Expectedly, the ruling regime wants them to say more about what they would do differently.  Equally unsurprisingly, the other side sees this as second-level detail for later.

There is still a while to go, but today let’s randomly explore a different picture leading into 2027.  We will play around with voter numbers, or the “tyranny of numbers”, even as the new group of IEBC commissioners settles into its work.  

For all the talk we hear about an election around “ideas and issues”, this is the backroom stuff that you can be sure is currently occupying every side of the political divide.  What might the overall voter universe look like in 2027?  Let’s guess.

Using IEBC data and creatively extrapolating from KNBS population projections, we start from a 2022 baseline in which, out of an estimated national population of 50.6 million, we had around 26.8 million age-eligible voters. Of this number, 22.1 million people registered to vote of whom 14.2 million actually voted.

In simple math, 4.7 million people who could have, didn’t register, and 7.9 million of those who registered didn’t vote. Lest we forget, the presidential election was won with 7.2 million votes, but today our focus is the overall voter universe, as IEBC’s current task.

Translated into proportions, we are saying 82.4 per cent of eligible voters registered and 64.3 per cent of registered voters voted (i.e. voter turnout), meaning roughly 53 per cent of potential voters did so in 2022. In the multi-party era, it is only in 2007 (54 per cent – based on 78 per cent of eligible voters and 69 per cent voter turnout) and 2013 (57 per cent – based on 66 per cent of eligible voters and an astonishing 86 per cent voter turnout) that this effective voter proportion was exceeded.  

For the record, our widely lauded 2002 election only hit a 37 per cent effective vote based on 66 per cent of eligible voters and a 57 per cent voter turnout!  The only other time Kenya had a greater than 50 per cent effective vote was 1997 (51 per cent based on 75 per cent of eligible voters and a 68 per cent voter turnout). Tyranny of numbers indeed.

Does this mean 2002 was our only “free and fair” real election?  As a final perspective, it is notable that the only presidential election that was annulled – the 2017 “vifaranga vya kompyuta” one – had an effective vote rate of 61 per cent driven by 78 per cent of eligible voters and a 78 per cent turnout!  And speaking of turnout, remember that fewer people voted in 2022 than that election!

As a final titbit, the presidential winner’s effective winning percentage (votes received as a proportion of total eligible, not just registered, voters) has never exceeded 30 per cent since 1992; the highest was the 2017 repeat election where 98 per cent of the effective 30 per cent vote was won. Only in 2013 (at 44 per cent) has it come close to half of registered voters.

But, to repeat, today we are looking at the overall voter universe, not presidential election results.  

As we head into 2027, IEBC have told us that the 22.1 million voter register from 2022 remains intact (so why do they get annual budgets from our exchequer if they haven’t been registering voters as part of continuous registration?).

We also know from their planning and budgeting documents that the plan is to register another 5.7 million voters (presumably in net terms) to take us to a total of the total of 27.8 million voters in 2027. Back of the envelope calculations using KNBS projections suggest that Kenya’s population will be 55.7 million then, with up to 32.3 million eligible voters.  We have no recent update from IEBC, but this implies a registration target of 86 per cent of potential, which would be a significant leap forward from the earlier data above.

Let’s ignore the IEBC target for now, and instead examine three scenarios building on 2022. In a base case scenario where 2022 ratios of registered to potential (eligible) and actual to registered, voters holds, we are looking at 15.6 million people voting in 2027 out of 24.3 million registered.

In a second “voter suppression” scenario where these two 2022 ratios individually drop by 2.5 percentage points, this comes out as 14.1 million voters out of 22.9 million registered (as compared to Sh14.2 million out of 22.1 million in 2022).  This is not an inconceivable happening.

On other hand, a third “Gen Z wave” scenario, where 2022 registered/eligible and actual/registered ratios rise by 7.5 percentage points each, we end up with 20.4 million people voting out of 28.5 million registered voters.

Of course, these scenarios represent the extreme bounds of probability, even if they are not impossible. They might help us better understand the voter universe that IEBC might target for 2027, and probably help us to predict likely turnout.

Indeed, since our political elites are most comfortable mobilising elections as an ethnic census, it is possible to break down these scenarios to regions, but we will leave that for another article.

Let’s instead conclude with a final set of numbers: an alternative view of the voter universe.  Let’s call this the “tribeless” view and base it, at a high level, on 32 million age-eligible voters in 2027 as mentioned earlier.  

Let’s divide this entire voter base between “Hustlers/Non-Hustlers” (a class distinction) and Gen Zs/Non-Gen Zs (an age distinction) while understanding that there are Gen Zs who are hustlers but not all Gen Zs are hustlers and not all hustlers are Gen Zs.  We extrapolate from KNBS a Gen Z population of 18 million in 2027; 14 million of voting age.

If we reasonably assume, for argument purposes, that 85 per cent of Gen Zs are hustlers, and 70 per cent of hustlers are Gen Zs (that is, 15 per cent of Gen Zs are non-hustlers, and 30 per cent of hustlers are non-Gen Zs) then here’s some quick math.  We have 12 million Gen Z hustlers in the 2027 voter universe, 2 million non-hustler Gen Zs and 6 million non-Gen Z hustlers.

So we have 14 million Gen Zs and 18 million hustlers of whom 12 million are both Gen Zs and hustlers. Accounting for overlaps, we have a grand total of 20 million Gen Zs and hustlers in 2027. That leaves the rest of us, non-Gen Z, non-hustlers as the remaining 12 million of the 32 million.  

When you see this tribeless tyranny of numbers, do you now begin to see why both sides of the political divide are scrambling to get into all sorts of coalition basically around tribe?