Populist Partisans and Public Confidence in the 2022 Kenyan Elections

• In Event: Critically Reinterpreting Populism in Africa

Abstract

International and domestic election observation missions (EOMs) have been commonplace in hundreds of elections worldwide, especially in East and Central Europe, Latin America, and Africa, following the adoption of multiparty competition in the past three to four decades. Yet, whether statements by election observers have an effect on voter confidence in election outcomes has received little attention from political scientists. In addition to surveys and public opinion polls, this paper utilizes a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in Kenya after the 2022 elections to determine whether observer reports influence Kenyan voters' perspectives on the election process and its results. We find no or only small effects of election observer statements on the views of Kenyan voters. Our findings suggest instead that whether voters were “populist partisans” and embraced the populist rhetoric of the winning candidate, William Ruto, had a significant effect in shaping voters’ assessments of the credibility and accuracy of the outcome. We conclude that election observers' evaluations have less effect in highly polarized political contexts and in cases where the electorate is highly knowledgeable about the positions of the opposing candidates.

Authors

• Udoi Rateng, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• M. Anne Pitcher, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Rod Alence, University of the Witwatersrand