I finally finished the deep-dive of last week and redid the party and ethnic analysis for all 289 constituency MPs elected on 8 August 2017 (see previous blog posts). I then compared the results against the 2009 Kenya census population figures by reported ethnicity. The resulting figure shows both how each community split between the two main alliances, and how well those communities did in the 2010 constituency boundary redefinition and in winning elections in the growing number of multi-ethnic constituencies in the country. The results are shown here: For clarity, I have coloured all the pro-Jubilee teams blue and all the pro-NASA teams orange. There were a very few MPs who campaigned as genuinely independent or refused to declare publicly who they backed, saying "party politics had no place" in their seat, mainly in the Gusii and Kamba. They are coloured grey.
What we can see from this picture is: 1. Most larger communities plumped hard for one team or the other, and as a result, their parliamentary parties show the same pattern. Every single Kikuyu, Embu, Meru, Mbeere and Tharaka MP is in Jubilee (or was a pro-Jubilee post-primary defector) and every single Luo or Basuba MP is in NASA (or was a post-ODM primary independent). Ethnicity and party preference are completely aligned in an uncomfortably close way in these communities. 2. It was striking how well the Kalenjin community did in terms of constituency representation in their homelands, and in winning seats in the multi-ethnic rift (and even one seat in Nairobi). The Oromo-speaking communities can clearly be seen to have been allocated more constituencies than their population would strictly require, because of their vast size and district historical identities. The Kikuyu community are almost exactly "right" (17.3% of elected MPs with 17.2% of the 2009 population), while the Luhya, Luo, Kamba, Gusii and Meru all ended up slightly "under-represented" in the current lower house amongst elected constituency MPs. The elected Women Representatives will - when added - follow a similar pattern, but because of their allocation by counties they will further strengthen the over representation of the semi-arid historically pastoral communities. (As always, this work has been done without reward or partisan objective, but purely to encourage informed discussion)
1 Comment
Leave a Reply. |
Topics
Thoughts on anything Kenya, mostly political. Archives
March 2024
Categories |