Voting in Kenya: Putting ethnicity in perspective

The introduction of multiparty politics to Kenya in 1991 led to the population splintering along ethnic groupings. The first multiparty election in 1992 therefore rotated around ethnic alignments as were the 1997 general elections. But in the 2002, a broad coalition of ethnic groups supported Mwai Kibaki. A broader overview of African elections reveals that voters consider factors other than ethnicity in deciding how to vote. Based on results from a national probability sample survey conducted in December 2007, this article shows that, while ethnic origins drive voting patterns, elections in Kenya amount to more than a mere ethnic census. The article reviews how Kenyans see themselves, which is mainly in non-ethnic terms. It then reports on how they see others, whom they fear will organize politically along ethnic lines. People therefore vote defensively in ethnic blocs, but not exclusively. In 2007, they also took particular policy issues into account, including living standards, corruption and federalism.

The article makes the following observations:

• It confirms that the recent post-election violence signals strong ethnic identification although Kenyans resist defining themselves in ethnic terms in their electoral choices which are on ethnic lines
• Respondents also show a high degree of mistrust of members of other ethnic groups and consider the behavior of these other groups to be influenced primarily by ethnicity
• Voting in Kenya is therefore defensively and fundamentally an ethnic census
• The policy indicators concerning the performance of the incumbent government do matter in influencing voters’ choices
• Considerations of economic self-interest matter most for those individuals who define their identities in “non-ethnic” terms but these interest-driven policy voters are a product of broad social, economic, and geographical changes
• If “non-ethnics” are the most geographically and economically mobile elements in Kenyan society, then a transformation of ethnic voting into policy voting would seem to require further social structural change, including greater contact and integration among ethnic groups
• The post-election phenomenon of ethnic cleansing, in which migrant populations have been forced back into their provinces of origin, does not augur well for the further development of interest-based voting or democratic politics in Kenya.
  

The article demonstrates that the relative weight that individuals grant to ethnic and policy voting depends in good part on how they define their group identities, with "ethnics" engaging mainly in identity voting and "non-ethnics" giving more weight to interests and issues.