A presidential pre-election opinion poll commissioned by Anap Foundation, a non-profit organisation, has placed Peter Obi of the Labour Party as the leading candidate.
The poll results, which was released on Wednesday, projected that Obi is ahead among four leading candidates for the 2023 presidential election.
The three other candidates are Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP).
The result of the poll, which was conducted in December, showed that 23 percent of respondents proposed to vote for Obi if the election was held at the time of the poll, while Tinubu got 13 percent.
Atiku came third with 10 percent, while Kwankwaso was a distant fourth with two percent.
“Mr. Peter Obi’s 10%-point lead at this stage is significant, but not sufficient to separate him from a leading pack of candidates scoring 13%, 10% and 2%,” Atedo Peterside, ANAP’s founder, said in a statement on Wednesday.
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“Undecided voters and those who prefer not to reveal their preferred candidate add up to a whopping 29% and 23%, respectively.
“The gender split of undecided voters shows that 38% of women are undecided versus 21% of male voters. This result was polled from 1,000 respondents; after which Anap Foundation conducted similar polls with a 2,000 and 3,000 respondents sample size, the difference in the results was not significant.”
In the north-central, the poll places Obi in the lead with 24 percent, followed by Tinubu with nine percent, Atiku with eight percent, and Kwankwaso with one percent.
In the north-east, Atiku leads with 23 percent, Tinubu with 15 percent, Obi has eight percent, and Kwankwaso has two percent. In the north-west, Atiku is top with 17 percent, followed by Tinubu with 15 percent, Obi with 11 percent, and Kwankwaso scored six percent.
In the south-east, 50 percent of the voters chose Obi, Tinubu and Atiku had one percent each, and Kwankwaso did not have any percentage. In the south-south, 46 percent aligned with Obi, Tinubu came a distant second with nine percent, Atiku had three percent, and Kwankwaso got one percent.
In the south-west, Tinubu came first with 22 percent, Obi had 15 percent, Atiku scored four percent, and Kwankwaso had one percent.
In the statement, the organisation said the December polls are inconclusive because the combination of the undecided voters and voters who refused to disclose their preferences, is enough to change the poll outcome.
“However, Anap Foundation has concluded that the trends are clear enough to establish the front-runners and so our subsequent polls will continue to concentrate on the 4 leading candidates only,” the statement reads.
In September, a similar NOI poll placed Obi as the leading candidate for the 2023 presidential race, with 21 percent of votes.