Indeed, the last national election was quite infectious and full of very many interesting aspects of political interest. One of these is how the predictions were made. None of these foretellers ever entertained the thought that Daniel Kwelagobe and Nehemiah Modubule could wake up with the voter’s egg on their faces.
The reason why such predictabilities were never entertained, even by the political parties themselves, shows the archaic manner in which political polls are still done in Botswana. The University of Botswana through its Department of Sociology and Political Science must come to the party and get actively involved in our democracy. They must run opinion polls, literally, on every constituency in this country. This will help the candidates to adjust their campaigns and tow with what the polls seem to suggest. In the early 90’s there was a parliamentary by-election in Ngwaketse West and the university got involved in running an opinion poll as part of the training of their students. They did a commendable job because the results came as expected and within the acceptable margin of error. The BNF won the by-election and the ruling BDP blamed the university for bias influence on the electorates.
