By Our Senior Reporter
Barely some few days after another opinion poll put the Tonse Alliance Presidential candidate in poll position to win the June 23 fresh Presidential Election, another opinion poll result has also put the Tonse Alliance candidate the favourite to win the election with a margin of 59% against the DPP-UDF candidate, Peter Mutharika’s 38.9%.
A research institute based in Australia, Geographical and Demography Research Institute (GDRI) conducted a purposive research which was aimed at finding the popular candidate among the three contesting candidates, Peter Kuwani of Mbakuwaku Movement, Lazarus Chakwera of MCP-UTM alliance and Peter Mutharika of DPP-UDF alliance.
The survey was conducted in all the 28 districts of the country. Releasing the results from the bureau’s headquarters office the GDRI’s communications officer Alexander Claswolf said this type of research was also conducted and proved to be accurate in Kenya, Ivory Coast, France and United States of America.
“Following the findings of a three month survey which was conducted in the southern African state, Malawi GDRI here by declare Lazarus Chakwera of the Tonse Alliance winner of the Malawi Opinion Poll presidential election, Honourable Lazarus Chakwera of MCP-UTM alliance gets 59.0% of the total votes to be casted while the DPP-UDF alliance candidate, Peter Mutharika will trail with 38.9% of the votes while Peter Kuwani will get less than 1% of the total votes,” reads part of the release.
Claswolf further said, enumerators managed to reach 350 000 people who were sampled and they freely expressed their views as to who will become the next president of Malawi which has been greatly fragmented on religious and tribal ground which has also been a determination factor in the voting patterns.
Peter Kuwani of Mbakuwaku Movement managed to collect some of what could be undecided voters in Malawi’s central region districts of Mchinji and Ntchisi.
However, the report has also indicated that most youths who did not vote in the May 19th 2019 election but were registered will take part in this election after being inspired by the Citizen for Transportation (CFT) Commander in Chief, Tomothy Mtambo.
Failure to access the Malawi Enterprise Development Fund has also be a contributing factor towards the loss in popularity of the incumbent president, Peter Mutharika.
Malawians will on June 23 cast their votes to elect the president following the nullification of the May 19, 2019 presidential election results by the Constitutional court and upheld by the Supreme Court due to the failure by the Malawi Electoral Commission to properly manage the results.