TITLE:
Going against the Grain of Ethnic Voting: The Scramble for Votes in the 2013 Presidential Election in Western Kenya
AUTHORS:
Adams Oloo
KEYWORDS:
Ethnicity, Elections, Politics, Running Mate
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.3 No.4,
April
20,
2016
ABSTRACT: Political mobilization and voting patterns in Kenya
have revolved around ethnicity since the return to multi-party politics in
1992. Since then the contest in successive years has been largely confined to
the five big tribes who together constitute around 70% of the population. These
are the Kikuyu, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba in that order. But while the
Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luo and Kamba have in one election or another rallied
overwhelmingly behind their kin, the Luhya have been averse to this
trend. This was more so in the 2013 election when conventional wisdom dictated
that the Luhya’s true to Kenyan tradition would rally behind the candidature of
Musalia Mudavadi. The results however proved otherwise. This article teases out
the factors that have influenced the Luhya’s voting pattern generally in
addition to specifically assessing the factors that explain Mudavadi’s inability
to galvanize the Luhya vote akin to candidates from the other four big tribes.