2023: Fresh Poll Puts Peter Obi Ahead Of Atiku, Tinubu

The result of a fresh poll conducted by Stears has put the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, as the favourite to win the February 25 presidential election.

The poll puts Obi ahead of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu as well as other contestants including Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar.

The poll result puts Obi in the lead with 27% of all votes, followed by Tinubu with 15%, and Atiku with 12%. It also showed that Obi is the most universally accepted candidate and that Nigerians vote along religious lines.

Naija News understands the result of the poll conducted by Stears, a pan-African data company, was released on Tuesday, February 7, 2023.

The company said from the poll’s data set, Obi is the candidate that achieves at least 25 percent of the vote in the most geopolitical zones (five of six) among voters that declared their candidate preference.

It added that the LP flagbearer leads Tinubu (four out of five), while Atiku only secures 25 percent of the vote in two geopolitical zones.

According to the firm, the only region where Obi fails to secure 25 percent of the vote is the North-West, where the presence of Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) means that votes are most evenly split in the region.

In a statement on Tuesday, Stears Head of Intelligence & Co-Founder, Michael Famoroti, said all 36 states and the FCT were polled.

Famoroti disclosed that the sample size and breakdown also enable Stears to provide statistically valid predictions at the state level, a unique feature of the 2023 electoral polls made available to the public.

He added that after conducting Nigeria’s most robust public opinion polls for the 2023 cycle, Stears developed a proprietary estimation model that predicts likely voting patterns for silent voters within the data set, enabling comprehensive forecasts of the 2023 presidential elections.

He said: “Simple analysis of the poll results puts Obi in the lead with 27 per cent of all votes, ahead of Tinubu (15 per cent) and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (12 per cent).

“This is aligned with the results of other polls; however, it is hard to draw definite conclusions without examining the large portion of respondents who do not provide a candidate preference—a proportion as high as 50 per cent in previously released polls.

“Where other polls have been inconclusive due to the large share of silent voters, Stears’ proprietary model is able to provide answers by predicting the most likely candidate for silent voters.”