Advocate of the High Court Jamal Abdikadir says Kenya's political scene has become too fluid to make reliable predictions ahead of the 2027 General Election, arguing that changing voter attitudes and the political shifts triggered by the 2024 Finance Bill protests have reshaped the country's electoral landscape.
Speaking during a Radio Generation interview on Friday, Abdikadir said the political realignment witnessed after the 2024 protests disrupted the traditional political order, making it difficult to accurately predict who will emerge victorious in the next General Election.
He said the uncertainty extends beyond the presidential race, noting that it is now equally difficult to forecast who will be elected as governors or which political figures will command influence across the country.
According to Abdikadir, the events of 2024 altered Kenya's political dynamics in a way that has left both politicians and analysts grappling with an unpredictable electorate.
He added that the changing political environment has also made the work of opinion pollsters more challenging, saying current trends are difficult to measure with certainty.
"Even Infotrak and other pollsters who are trying to give us all these kinds of determinations or at least predictions, you really cannot put a finger on what exactly this is all about."
Abdikadir said Kenyan elections have often been shaped more by political messaging than by public scrutiny of manifestos and policy proposals.
"Politics generally shifts between one of euphoria and one of merit. Most of the time we are in the bandwagon of what we will call 2002 kind of politics, and then it repeated itself in 2022. This is a situation where a narrative is created out there, and then everyone joins in. No one really looks at it closely - what exactly is this person or this grouping offering."
He cited the 2022 General Election as an example, saying the contest was largely defined by the "hustlers versus dynasty" narrative rather than detailed debate on policy.
"In 2022, we had that, so it was nothing but hustlers fighting against dynasties. It doesn't really make sense, but so long as you knew you were not in a good social status, this was your team. That was the only qualification."
Abdikadir observed that many Kenyans who voted in the 2022 election did not closely examine the Kenya Kwanza administration's manifesto, even though many of the government's current programmes were outlined in its campaign agenda.
He said areas such as agriculture, job creation, digitisation and energy were among the priorities borrowed from Vision 2030 and incorporated into the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda.
While acknowledging government efforts in programmes including subsidised fertiliser, digital reforms and overseas labour opportunities, Abdikadir maintained that the country's political mood remains unpredictable.
He said changing public expectations, evolving national conversations and closer scrutiny of government performance have made the 2027 General Election far harder to predict than previous contests.