BENIN CITY – An aggregation of polls conducted by independent bodies, hours after the CHANNELS Television Governorship Debate on Sunday, placed the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Governor Godwin Obaseki ahead of his counterpart, Osagie Ize-Iyamu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as three polls ranked the governor ahead with a wide margin of over 20 per cent, Special Adviser to Edo State Governor, Mr. Crusoe Osagie has said.
Osagie explained that “The polls were conducted by CHANNELS TV, organisers of the debate, Flash Poller, an international pollster, and Dr. Joe Abah, Director-General of Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR).”
He added: “While CHANNELS TV’s poll showed that Obaseki won Ize-Iyamu with 67.58 per cent to 32.42 per cent, Flash Poller ranked the governor with 76.3 per cent over Ize-Iyamu’s 23.7 per cent and Abah’s poll showed that Obaseki garnered 71 per cent of the positive votes while APC’s Ize-Iyamu scored 29 per cent (as at the time this report was filed).
“According to Flash Poller, the sampled population for the poll scored Obaseki higher than the APC candidate in elocution, presentation, comportment, appreciation of issues, use of rebuttal, use of argument, factuality, amongst other rubrics, with an average score of 7 to 3, in favour of the PDP candidate.
“The international pollster further noted that viewers who were sampled randomly said Governor Obaseki demonstrated a firm understanding of development issues, namely; resource mobilisation, partnership with development actors such as the World Bank and his high premium on due process, transparency and the rule of law.”
Obaseki’s aide further said that “some of the respondents in the poll, as presented by the pollsters, highlighted Obaseki’s approach to governance, which they said is in line with best practice and how governing is done in civilised and sane clime, as against Ize-Iyamu’s, who wasted his allotted time attacking Obaseki and lost the opportunity to market his Simple Agenda to a global audience.”
