What might these findings tell us about the upcoming elections? To answer this question, I asked myself: how closely did previous Afrobarometer results correspond to actual election results? When the Afrobarometer team asked respondents how they would vote “if elections were held tomorrow” in 2008, 69% said that they would vote for the BDP, 13% for the BNF, 10% for either the BCP or BAM, and 1% for the BPP. In 2008, a similar portion of respondents (5%) said that they would not vote, but only 2% refused to answer the question and 1% said that they did not know (http://www.afrobarometer.org/files/documents/summary_results/bot_r4_sor.pdf). Elections took place roughly a year later. The BDP received 53.3% of the vote, the BNF got 21.9%, the BCP and BAM received 21.5%, the BPP 1.4%, and 1.9% voted for independent candidates. The comparisons are not ideal, for the previous Afrobarometer survey was conducted in September/October 2008, a full year ahead of the elections in October 2009.
The 2005 Afrobarometer survey was conducted not quite a year after the 2004 elections, in May - June. In response to the “if elections were held tomorrow” question, 53% of respondents said that they would vote for the BDP, 24% for the BNF, 9% for the BCP, and 1% for the BIP (http://www.afrobarometer.org/files/documents/summary_results/bot_r3_sor.pdf). The percentage reporting that they would not vote was 4%. Only 2% refused to answer, but 6% said that they did not know. By comparison, in the 2004 elections, the BDP received 51.7% of the vote, the BNF got 26.1%, the BCP 16.6%, BAM 2.8%, BPP 1.9%, and others got 0.8%.
