Numbers that describe today’s General Election
Today is a moment of truth for 16,098 candidates who were cleared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to contest elective seats, in the poll that will leave 14,506 of them in premium tears after losing.
A total of 22,102,532 Kenyans are registered to vote.
There are only 1, 882 elective positions spread across the country-one presidency, governors, senators, woman representatives for the 47 counties, 290 members of the National Assembly and 1,450 ward representatives, meaning voters will only vote for six candidates-one for each seat in the poll which IEBC had announced it required at least Sh40.9 billion to carry out.
Four candidates
In the lists of the candidates cleared by the electoral body, there are four presidential candidates – Deputy President William Ru-to who is standing on United Democratic Alliance (UDA), former Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya coali-tion, Roots Party candidate George Wajackoyah and Waihiga Mwaure of Agano Party, which is a drop from eight in the last poll.
IEBC statistics show the number of candidates went up by 1,546 from 4,552 in 2017.
The 22,102,532 voters up from 19,611,423 in 2017 are distributed in the 47 counties which, politically, are clustered into ten re-gions based on geographical and ethnic arithmetic.
There is Nairobi with 2,415,310 voters, Mt Kenya counties (4,716, 120), Coast (1,963,144), North Rift (2,584,938), western (2,217,948), Ukambani (1,554,655), Nakuru (1,054,856) voters, Maa counties (962,071), Luo Nyanza (2,160,385), Gusii (960, 293), northeastern (882,677) while Kericho and Bomet, which are part of South Rift have 805,052 voters, Trans Nzoia (398,981) and Tur-kana (238,528).
Mt Kenya counties include Kiambu, with 1,275,008 voters, the second highest number of voters after Nairobi, Murang’a (620,929), Nyeri 481,632, Nyandarua 361,165,020 Kirinyaga 376,001, Laikipia (263,012), Meru (772,139) Tharaka - Nithi (231,932) and Embu (334,302).
IEBC printed a total of 132,722,748 ballot papers, being one for each of the registered voters for the six elective seats.
Today, Kenyans will queue in 46,232 polling stations, each having not more than 700 voters. According to IEBC chair Wafula Chebukati, the number rose by 5,349 stations in 2017.
This indicates that presidential candidates, particularly Ruto and Raila who are the front runners in the race, may have to deploy at least 46,232 polling agents with a minimum wage of Sh1,000 per day to guard their voters, requiring them to part with at least Sh140 million to secure their votes.
Besides, the IEBC staff, there will be about 300,000 polling agents, thousands of observers and journalists that have been ac-credited to oversee the elections, with the commission having announced 418,192 temporary vacancies, including 46,233 presiding officers up from 40,883 in 2017.
