Voters Registration and the Road to April 2011 Election…

NOI Polls

Abuja, Nigeria. March 2011

Voters Registration and the Road to April 2011 Election…

Nigerians will go to the polls April 9 2011 to elect a new president. There also will be federal and state elections over a three-week period. In preparation for the election, the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) started the registration of voters to ensure that eligible voters are properly registered and to reduce fraudulent duplication of voters. NOI Polls Ltd recently conducted its monthly snap poll to find out the opinion of Nigerians on the recently completed voters registration exercise. In the survey, 9 out of 10 people interviewed confirmed they registered to vote.

 

9 out of every 10 people that registered to vote said they registered in order to vote while the remaining 2 percent said they registered just to have the voter registration card.

Nigerians seem to have confidence in the forthcoming elections, as a majority of registered voters believe their votes will count. When asked whether they think their vote will count in the April 2011 election, 82 percent of those who registered said they think their votes will count, 10 percent said they do not know whether their votes would count while 4 percent think their votes would not count.

Of the 6 percent who did not register, 33 percent pointed out that the long queues was the main reason why they could not register; 25 percent said they no time, 15 percent blamed the inaccessibility of the registration booths while 12 percent said the faulty registration equipment put them off from registering.

The voters registration exercise, which wobbled to a start on the 15th of Jan 2011, was extended beyond the stipulated two-week duration to allow more time for eligible voters to register. The polls show Nigerians are keen to participate in the April elections and are optimistic about the fairness of the election.

Survey Methods

These results are based on 1095 telephone interviews with randomly selected phone–owning Nigerians aged 18 years and older, across the six geographical regions of the country. The poll was conducted between February 23rd -25th, 2011. With a sample of this size, we can say with 95% confidence that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 4 percentage points of what they would have been if the entire population had been surveyed. This poll is part of the ongoing snap poll exercise conducted by NOI Polls to rapidly assess public sentiments following various social, political or economic events. NOI Polls - a Nigeria based opinion research organization works in technical partnership with Gallup Polls (USA), to conduct periodic opinion polls on various socioeconomic issues in Nigeria.