Opinion / Columnist
The election results were genuine
12 Aug 2018 at 09:41hrs | Views
So finally its clear, Nelson Chamisa is going to court. After hesitating about his next move, at the 90th minute Chamisa's lawyers turned up at the Constitutional Court to put in their papers.
Of course, Chamisa has a right to his day in court. Our constitution is clear on the matter, and court is certainly better than violence.
But the reality is that Chamisa will lose the court case. Not because the court is biased (as he will no doubt claim), but because ED won the election. It was close, Chamisa did well, but ED won.
If you don't believe me, look at the facts.
First, let's look at the polls. Afrobarometer is a highly respected, international polling organisation that has been doing opinion research across Africa for the past two decades. Anyone who accuses it of bias or a lack of professionalism doesn't know what they are talking about.
In May, Afrobarometer conducted a survey that said ED led Chamisa by 11%. MDC supporters attacked the credibility of the poll, Zanu-PF supporters were smug.
Two months later, ten days before the election, the same organisation did a follow up poll. It showed that Chamisa had cut the lead to just 3%. Now Zanu-PF supporters were nervous, while the same MDC supporters were now shouting from the rooftops that their man had all the momentum and Afrobarometer was a great organisation.
Meanwhile, the more sober analysts among us simply looked at the numbers and made the obvious conclusion – a close race but ED was favourite, with a single digit win the most likely outcome. Further, a deeper analysis of the data that excluded those who did not indicate a clear preference showed that the most likely outcome was ED to win 50%, Chamisa to win 46% and 4% to go to other candidates.
The final result was 50.8% to ED, 44.3% to Chamisa and about 3.5% to other candidates. Well done Afrobarometer! Well done science!
But we don't need to only look at the pre-election polls to prove the eventual result was accurate – we can look at the tally itself.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) is a network of 30 independent, non-partisan NGOs that have been observing all aspects of the electoral process in Zimbabwe since 2000. It is funded by liberal donors in the international community, notably George Soros, a pro-democracy activist and MDC sympathiser. It certainly has no great love for ZANU-PF.
In order to identify rigging, ZESN did its own vote tally, based on the Sample-Based Observation methodology. SBO is an advanced Election Day observation methodology which allows ZESN to confidently comment on the voting and results tabulation processes. SBOs have contributed to systematic election observation efforts around the world and in 12 countries in Africa such as Cote d'Ivoire, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria. In all cases the SBO accurately projected the vote tabulation outcomes including presidential results.
When ZESN announced their SBO tally, there was a deafening silence from within the MDC. The reason: ZESN showed that by their tally, ED had won 50.7% of the vote, only a fraction of a percentage off the official results.
There are those who don't believe in science, who prefer to base their judgements on crowd sizes, social media comments and the boasts of their leaders.
There are others who don't understand science, and will attack the ZESN and Afrobarometer methodologies based on a lack of understanding of sampling and research techniques.
And there are those who simply don't want to accept science because it confirms something they don't want to believe.
Don't be these people.
Instead, I implore you to look at the science that both predicted and verified the final result. The results announced by ZEC were genuine. No court case can or will overturn that.
While these facts may be uncomfortable reading, but they are facts nonetheless. After all, as John Adams, one of the American Founding Fathers, famously said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Mike, Harare
Of course, Chamisa has a right to his day in court. Our constitution is clear on the matter, and court is certainly better than violence.
But the reality is that Chamisa will lose the court case. Not because the court is biased (as he will no doubt claim), but because ED won the election. It was close, Chamisa did well, but ED won.
If you don't believe me, look at the facts.
First, let's look at the polls. Afrobarometer is a highly respected, international polling organisation that has been doing opinion research across Africa for the past two decades. Anyone who accuses it of bias or a lack of professionalism doesn't know what they are talking about.
In May, Afrobarometer conducted a survey that said ED led Chamisa by 11%. MDC supporters attacked the credibility of the poll, Zanu-PF supporters were smug.
Two months later, ten days before the election, the same organisation did a follow up poll. It showed that Chamisa had cut the lead to just 3%. Now Zanu-PF supporters were nervous, while the same MDC supporters were now shouting from the rooftops that their man had all the momentum and Afrobarometer was a great organisation.
Meanwhile, the more sober analysts among us simply looked at the numbers and made the obvious conclusion – a close race but ED was favourite, with a single digit win the most likely outcome. Further, a deeper analysis of the data that excluded those who did not indicate a clear preference showed that the most likely outcome was ED to win 50%, Chamisa to win 46% and 4% to go to other candidates.
The final result was 50.8% to ED, 44.3% to Chamisa and about 3.5% to other candidates. Well done Afrobarometer! Well done science!
But we don't need to only look at the pre-election polls to prove the eventual result was accurate – we can look at the tally itself.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) is a network of 30 independent, non-partisan NGOs that have been observing all aspects of the electoral process in Zimbabwe since 2000. It is funded by liberal donors in the international community, notably George Soros, a pro-democracy activist and MDC sympathiser. It certainly has no great love for ZANU-PF.
In order to identify rigging, ZESN did its own vote tally, based on the Sample-Based Observation methodology. SBO is an advanced Election Day observation methodology which allows ZESN to confidently comment on the voting and results tabulation processes. SBOs have contributed to systematic election observation efforts around the world and in 12 countries in Africa such as Cote d'Ivoire, Malawi, Ghana and Nigeria. In all cases the SBO accurately projected the vote tabulation outcomes including presidential results.
When ZESN announced their SBO tally, there was a deafening silence from within the MDC. The reason: ZESN showed that by their tally, ED had won 50.7% of the vote, only a fraction of a percentage off the official results.
There are those who don't believe in science, who prefer to base their judgements on crowd sizes, social media comments and the boasts of their leaders.
There are others who don't understand science, and will attack the ZESN and Afrobarometer methodologies based on a lack of understanding of sampling and research techniques.
And there are those who simply don't want to accept science because it confirms something they don't want to believe.
Don't be these people.
Instead, I implore you to look at the science that both predicted and verified the final result. The results announced by ZEC were genuine. No court case can or will overturn that.
While these facts may be uncomfortable reading, but they are facts nonetheless. After all, as John Adams, one of the American Founding Fathers, famously said, "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
Mike, Harare
Source - Mike Tawanda
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