Edo 2024: Poll gives Ighodalo lead over Okpebholo, Akpata

Less than a month to the Edo governorship election, a pre-election poll shows that Asue Ighodalo, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate is leading his two main challengers.

In the poll conducted by African Polling Institute (API), 43 per cent of the respondents favoured Mr Ighodalo as the next governor, 20 per cent favoured Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while 9 per cent favoured the Labour Party candidate, Olumide Akpata.

However, 28 per cent of the 2, 678 respondents were undecided, according to the poll result.

API is an independent, non-profit, and non-partisan opinion research think-tank that undertakes opinion polls and surveys, social research, evaluation and development programmes at the intersection of democracy, governance, economic conditions, markets, and public survey.

“It involved telephone interviews of a random sample. Two thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight randomly selected phone-owning Nigerians aged 18 years plus, representing the 18 local government areas in Edo State,” the API said of the poll.

The respondent consisted of 2,687 voters across the 18 local government areas, with the following distributions: Etsako Central (94), Etsako East (98), Etsako West (157), Owan East (145), Akoko Edo (211), Owan West (83), Esan North East (87), Esan South East (118), Iqueben (62), Esan Central (137), Esan West (155), Egor (279), Ikpoba-Okha (306), Oredo (302), Orhionmwon (131), Ovia North East (108), Ovia South West (123) and Uhunmonde (90).

According to socio-demographics of the respondents released by the API, 51 per cent were male while 49 per cent were female.

Further demographic details indicate that 19 per cent of the respondents were aged 18-34 years, 71 per cent aged 35-60 years while 10 per cent were aged 60 and above.

The most important factors that influence voters’ decisions, according to API, include competence, personality, experience and track record, political party and manifesto/policy stance.

For Mr Ighodalo, a lawyer and banker, 30 per cent of the respondents said they will vote for him based on his capacity, qualifications and accomplishments, 24 per cent said because of his economic experience, 15 per cent backed his manifesto & policy plans while 10 per cent said they will vote for him because of his credibility & honesty.

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For Mr Okpebholo, a serving senator and the APC candidate, 30 per cent of respondents support him because of his political party, 25 per cent said he is a “home boy” while 19 per cent support him because he is a senator.

For the lawyer and Labour Party candidate, Mr Akpata, 30 per cent of the respondents favoured his political party, 27 per cent said because he is “Obedient” while 24 per cent said because he is young.

However, the number of respondents is statistically insignificant compared with the number of registered voters in the state.

According to the INEC updated voter register, Edo has a total number of 2,629, 025 registered voters but 2,678 of the voters, representing 0.10 per cent, were sampled.