A recent poll by Trends and Insights For Africa (TIFA) has placed Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition presidential candidate Raila Odinga ahead of his Kenya Kwanza opponent Deputy President William Ruto.

Raila’s popularity has shot up by 7 points within the span of a month to poll at 39 per cent.

This comes especially after Raila picked NARC-Kenya leader Martha Karua as his running mate ahead of the August general election.

The study showed that Ruto dropped by 4 points from 39 per cent to 35 per cent in a span of three weeks, and after naming Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua as his running mate.

Raila’s popularity has been on a steady rise from 23 per cent in November 2021, 27 per cent in February 2022, and 32 per cent in April 2022 to the current 39 per cent.

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Ruto, on the other hand has dropped from 38 per cent in November 2021, maintained at 38 per cent in February 2022, and moved to 39 per cent in April before plummeting to the current 35 per cent.

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka polled at 2 per cent November 2021 and February 2022 tally.

Ruto’s UDA party leads the parties category at 29 per cent which is 4 points ahead of Raila’s ODM party which comes in at 25 per cent.

According to the study, a small minority of about 3 per cent identifies with the Jubilee party and just above 37 per cent are undecided.

“Aside from a small minority who identify with Jubilee (3 per cent), the remainder – just over one-third (37percent) – are yet to decide about their preferred party (13 per cent), identify with no party (18 per cent), or declined to answer the question (6 per cent),” TIFA said.

None of the available political parties enjoys the support of over one-third of Kenyans.

The TIFA funded telephone assisted poll that was conducted on Tuesday sampled 1,719 respondents from all over the country.

Respondents were selected from regions subdivided into Central Rift, Coast, Lower Eastern, Mt Kenya, Nairobi, Northern, Nyanza, South Rift, and Western regions.

They were also divided according to their population.