Zambia's ruling party in front in latest poll

Zambia's ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) led by Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa was voted the most popular party in six provinces where an opinion poll was conducted recently, reported the Zambia News and Information Service Wednesday.

MMD received 46 percent of the votes, followed by the Patriotic Front (PF) and the United National Independent Party (UNIP), which posted a voting rate of 12 percent and 8 percent respectively.

Mwanawasa was voted the most popular leader in the country with a 45 percent vote, while PF leader Michael Sata took second place with 15 percent and Haikainde Hichilema, leader of the United Party for National Development (UPND) took third place with only 6 percent.

The polls came about two months before the south African nation 's general elections scheduled for September 28.

"22 percent of the electorate is undecided and depending on how they finally vote, the national picture may be altered," said Neo Simutanyi, researcher with Pangolin Consulting.

He said in Lusaka that a close analysis of preliminary trends suggest that this result may not significantly change, as the opposition was unlikely to unite behind one candidate and some of the undecided voters may actually vote for Mwanawasa.

Simutanyi said the result of this survey provides a tentative picture of the opinion by Zambians of this year's elections.

Mwanawasa took the lead in all the six provinces, with his majority vote expected to come from Western Province with a 76 percent, followed by the Northern Province at 68 Percent and 43 percent in Copperbelt Province.

The ruling MMD party also saw its majority votes coming from the same province at 71 percent, followed by the North and Eastern Provinces at 64 percent and 42 percent respectively.

A total random sample of 2,000 respondents aged 18 and above was drawn from six provinces and a multi-stage, stratified sampling was done to select the respondents by regions, district, constituency and wards level.

Simutanyi said special care was taken to ensure that the sample population contained all the national demographic characteristics to reduce sample errors and of the six provinces selected, two were urban and four rural.

Simutanyi said the opinion poll was based on six themes, issues of concern to electorate, health of presidential candidate, satisfaction with performance of government, opposition parties, popularity of parties and party leader.

Under the themes, the electorate noted that agriculture was the most important followed by general living conditions and education and unemployment in third and forth place.

Source: Xinhua