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Briefing paper

BP48: Ethnicity and violence in the 2007 elections in Kenya

Afrobarometer Briefing Paper No. 48
1 Feb 2008 Kenya
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The recent Kenyan elections have given rise to violent confrontations between ethnic communities. During the first half of December, in the run up to the elections, the University of Oxford, in collaboration with researchers from the Michigan State University and the University of Connecticut, conducted a detailed survey of voter intentions, attitudes towards violence, corruption, performance of leaders, political party preferences, ethnicity and socio-economic characteristics. The data are based on a sample of 1207 eligible voters, who were interviewed in 76 of Kenya’s 210 electoral constituencies between November 30 and December 7, 2007. Although the survey was designed to be nationally and regionally representative, a number of factors limited the implementation of the survey such that the final sample was to some extent biased towards persons of higher economic status.