THIS IS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT EMMERSON MNANGAGWA'S MARGIN OF VICTORY IN THE 2018 ELECTIONS

President Emmerson Mnangagwa is going to win the 2018 Harmonised election by a margin of between 218 000 and 392 000 individual votes.

It will be a margin big enough to make calls of a recount moot. It will be small enough to give credibility to the masses that attend Nelson Chamisa's rallies these days. Most importantly, it will be enough margin to render the elections credible, free and fair.

Where this margin, already guaranteed to President Mnangagwa, will come from, is the blind spot that the MDC Alliance has failed to locate. They have failed even to sniff it.

The MDC Alliance and Nelson Chamisa have absolutely no clue how the President and the ruling party are going to win. But they know that they will win.

So, the flailing pointing out of issues around the ballot paper printing, transportation and security is serving only to dig a deeper hole for the opposition alliance.

Nelson Chamisa, who claims that, without him and without the Alliance, there will be no credible election this year, is making the mistake of thinking that he and his party are the President's constituency and audience in this election.

They are not.

The President's constituency in this election is the international community. They are and only they are the gallery to which ZANU PF is playing.

So, some of us now know that the European Union, American, British and African observers are going to be invited to not only inspect the ballot papers, but to also, if they have enough numbers, escort them as they are transported around the country to various polling stations.

This courtesy is not going to be extended to any political party, including ZANU PF (leveling the playing field).

The observers will also be invited, together with political parties, to have agents and observers at all polling stations across Zimbabwe.  IF an observer team has flown in thousands of observers, then, of course they will be able to be at each polling station. The political parties, of course, will be represented at every polling station. Hint: at this very exact point is where the election is going to be won or lost.

Of course no one will ever pay attention to what I write here, but it bears writing anyway, so that you can come back and read it after the elections: Has anyone, even one person, interrogated how, as some ZANU PF districts and constituencies have protested, "known MDC supporters" have fielded themselves as candidates in ZANU PF primaries?"Let''s leave it at that.

And, for the life of them, the MDC Alliance can not figure out exactly what ED is going to do to win.

This is the reason, for all the hatred displayed towards Tendai Biti by MDC supporters who think that he stabbed Morgan Tsvangirai in the back after 2013, they are doing themselves a disservice by dismissively and contemptuously brushing aside his insistence that the elections this year are "rushed" and should be postponed.

Shallow "analysts" give the insulting and knee-jerk reaction that Biti just wants a Transitional Authority so that he can get into government  and taste some power because he "knows" he will be rejected by "the people" at elections this year.

That's the classic opposition  supporters' disease in this country of making their  wishes reality and refusing to consider anything that does not confirm their bias.

The truth is that Tendai Biti knows that neither he nor Nelson Chamisa are aware HOW President Mnangagwa and ZANU PF are going to win. He would like time to figure it out. But he will not be given that time by ZANU PF.

The blindness within the MDC Alliance and specifically, Nelson Chamisa's inner circle, is breathtaking. It is anchored in  a certain hubris that has no basis in fact. And it really is hubris, whose denouement, as with all hubris, will only be evident and obvious with the hindsight that only ever comes after the fact.