May I beg the indulgence of my teeming readers to once again return to the affairs in my state, to wit, Plateau State. Plateau State is a microcosm of Nigeria; not only is it strategically located at the heart of the map of Nigeria but its composition reflects the national mix of diversity. Nevertheless, the state has its unique interplay of socio-political dynamics, which gives governance and politics its peculiar form and character.
This morning I want to undertake a preview of the unfolding politics in the lead up the 2019 General Elections. Agreed that behavioral sciences are an imprecise science but given the giant leaps in the development of more scientific models of social measurements and methodologies, globally, electoral outcomes are being predicted with increasingly narrower margins of error. This may not yet be true of Nigeria but there is no doubt that analyses of political events and outcomes is today carried in the country with far more sophistication than what obtained in the 70s and 80s.
I lack the skills for a thorough election forecast, not being a professional pollster, but I believe that one can rely more on scientifically validated approaches for better assessment than the largely sentimental and pedestrian postulations one encounters on the social media. The danger of these false analyses on the social media is that they mislead public opinion. But more insidious is the tendency to incite electoral violence.
But first the background: In 2015 the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Rt. Hon. Simon Bako Lalong, polled 564,913 votes to beat Sen. Gyang Pwajok, who scored 520, 627 votes, to win the gubernatorial elections. The difference between them was 44, 286, in an election described as peaceful but marred by low turn-out. Although the gap is relatively substantial, Candidate Lalong was regarded as a “child of fortune” given the fact that he was a cross-party beneficiary in the historical PDP-rooted state. The controversy which trailed the selection of the PDP candidate was what cost it the historical constituency.
Perhaps, given the manner in which the PDP lost its power of incumbency many analysts are assuming, without evidence, that come 2019, Governor Lalong will be similarly swept away. This is one of the quaky presumptions on the social media. It flies in the face of research literature on “incumbency effect” in democratic re-elections. A study conducted by scholars looking at incumbency effect in elections into the United States House of Representatives in the second half of the 20th century, discovered that in 90% cases incumbent politicians succeeded in their re-election bids. This was explained by through data and the application of various logistic regression models, in this case the retrogressive discontinuity design (RDD) model.
But this is not to say that this model holds true of every situation, Bobbie Macdonald who applied the RDD to Zambian parliamentary and local government elections, noted on the contrary, the presence of incumbency disadvantages in India and Brazil in Asia and Latin America respectively, as well as Zambia in Africa. In the cited 2015 Elections, we also saw the failure of incumbency in Nigeria at both Federal and State (Benue and Plateau) levels. It is, therefore, important to critically interrogate variables that generate or enervate Incumbency effects to get a proper picture on the 2019 polls. This we shall do next week but today, we shall deal with another concept: approval rating.
This relates to the postulation that an incumbent with an approval rating of at least 49% would win re-election. This is a conclusion derived from data for US Presidential re-elections collected by Gallup Poll from 1940 to 2012 (Nate Silver, 2012). It also says: “… a year in advance of the election, the model figures that a president with a 60 percent approval rating is about 90 percent likely to win re-election, whereas a 40 percent rating translates into a win probability of a bit below 40 percent.”
I doubt if Governor Lalong has a 60% approval rating for me to wager a 90% probability in his re-election but I think he has not gone below the threshold of 49% if you consider that he still holds tightly to his 2015 political strongholds. Jos North, where he garnered 23% of his entire votes in 2015, remains in his kitty. His support in Mangu was “threatened” by the contentious outcome of the Local Government council polls but he now stands as a sole beneficiary from the fall-out of the bickering over the PDP’s choice of a running mate. Wase and Kanam are tightly in his grip. In Langtang North, which he won in 2015, pundits postulated he would lose soon after General Jeremiah T. Useini, emerged the candidate of the PDP. But now it looks uncertain; doubts have emerged over General’s popularity at home. His brother in-law, General Jonathan Temlong, has emerged as a contestant for the same position. If 75-year-old Jerry, as he’s popularly called, whose campaign in the crisis-prone state is based on his security expertise as a General, the younger General Temlong, is a regular guest discussant on security on national television (NTA), can claim far greater visibility as a security expert. Then there is the urbane and activist Mr. Joe Bitrus (aka Joe B). The denial of a solid local base for Useini will greatly favour Gov. Lalong in the long run.
What about the strategic votes of Plateau North Zone, aside Jos North. The question is does Sen. Useni, Lalong’s main opponent, have the support of former Governor Jonah Jang? It is public knowledge that Senator Jang supported Hon. George Daika at the PDP primaries. It is also well known that General Useni was critical of Jang all through his Administration, especially during the killings by armed herdsmen. Now Jang’s support is critical, will he get it?
I will only refer to a Facebook entry by Jang’s alter ego, the relentless Pamson Dagyat; on October 24, 2018, he posted, titled “Who Bewitched the PDP on the Plateau,” casting serious aspersions on the PDP Chairman, Mr. Damishi Sango, accusing him of ostracising those close to Sen. Jang, threatening they may consider “available alternatives.”
Next week we shall analyse threats to Governor Lalong’s incumbency.
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