HOW TO PROPERLY READ THE MOST CREDIBLE SURVEY RELEASED ON ZIMBABWE THIS YEAR

You will recall that, after the 2013 elections, our analysis of the reasons behind the results of that election were the most quoted and cited by international media, from The Guradian & The Times in London to the New York Times and Washington Post, Sunday Times of South Africa and many others. Reuters also picked it up and distributed the analysis widely.

So readers, we are reading the tea-leaves again and we will meet here when the results are announced. But we will be doing so to do what we did in 2013, which is basically to point out why our reading was, yet again, correct. And how it was, yet again, ignored by those who can most benefit from it.

There is one particular bomb in the MPOI/Afrobarometer survey released in Bulawayo on Thursday, June 07 2018 as Zimbabwe prepares for an election to be held on July 30 this year.

Basically, everyone, including MDC Alliance people, has missed this particular bomb.

Buried in the results are results that will see Nelson Chamisa get 2% of the vote unless he does something urgently and seriously.

The MDC Alliance, we have been told time and again, intends to appear on the ballot paper as MDC Alliance.

This appears to be a problem for their supporters, who have not been educated enough about this, by all indications. Here is the slide that nobody is paying attention to:

A full 28% of the electorate intend to vote for MDC-T Nelson Chamisa but only 2% intend to vote for the MDC-Alliance in the Presidential Election.

I am sure we can see the problem there. 

If the Alliance, as it has announced, intends to appear on the ballot as the MDC Alliance, they will get 2% of the vote. MDC-T supporters, from this information, will be looking for the name MDC-T on the ballot paper and they will put their X there.

It's the Welshman Ncube effect.

Ncube's breakaway MDC got 10 seats in Matabeleland in the 2008 elections not because they were genuinely popular (as evidenced by what happened to them in the 2013 elections), but because enough voters were looking for the name MDC to vote for. So they cast their vote for the one that said MDC. By this time, Tsvangirai had changed the name of his party to add to the T to it. Which, verifiably, confused enough people who knew MDC and were not sure what this MDC-T was. 

This risk is real.

But Emmerson Mnangagwa can relax. The MDC and opposition in general in Zimbabwe believes in its own propaganda and anything that disproves what they believe is dismissed as "propaganda" and "fake". 

So you can rest assured that the MDC Alliance and the MDC-T is not going to do anything about this at all. At all.

Depending on the outcome of the court case between Khupe and Chamisa's factions, the biggest beneficiary could actually be Madam Khupe and her MDC-T party. She may pick up more votes than even she herself expects.

Of course, for you regular readers, we will back here after the elections as I remind you of this very article/post. 

There are other nuggets in this report. 

It is instructive to do a deep dive into the things such as for instance, the levels of trust as reported in the survey for ZANU PF, Mnangagwa, Chamisa and the MDC.

Then there is the weighting of rural voters (the sample used is 37% urban and 63% rural).

The people who should worrying about this credible research appear the least concerned and that alone should give you and indication of where this election is headed.