By and large, it is a strongly held political view that a party cannot win an election without winning both Lusaka and Copperbelt provinces. To a great extent this view gives some credibility to rigging argument. However, whichever angle you take on the Zambian electoral map despite PF best effort it was going to be an uphill task to unsettle the MMD. This is because MMD rural district power base had well-matched eligible voters as the PF urban district power base. A basic number crunching on eligible voters makes it clear and visible that PF and UPND needed each other as much as MMD needed them to stay apart.
A basic analysis of eligible voters district by district revealed an interesting insight in that districts such as Mongu, Mumbwa, Chibombo, Lundazi, Petauke, Katete and Solwezi are as critical as Lusaka and Copperbelt based districts in deciding an outcome of an election.
Both PF and UPND went in an election disadvantaged because of lack of grassroots organisation in Western, Northwestern and Eastern provinces. As a result, a good strategist such as Mwaanga found it easy to win MMD an election just by a basic analysis of eligible voters district-by-district and not province-by-province.
For example, there were 521,082 eligible registered voters in Lusaka district but you do not need rocket science to know that you can cancel out PF Lusaka district voters’ advantage by just matching them with eligible district voters for Mumbwa (104,935), Lundazi (100,619), Chibombo (98,994), Solwezi (74,847), Kaoma (59,116), Kalabo (48,064) and Sesheke (35,188) districts.
Equally PF advantage in Ndola (131,737) district was invalidated by Chipata district (128,319).
In addition, PF voters in Kitwe (152,718) district were wiped out by Petauke (86,597) and Katete (71,122) districts.
Again, MMD made up for PF voters in Chingola district (60,693) by Chama (34,169) and Mwinilungu (51,893) districts.
In the same way, PF in both Mufulira (60,146) and Luanshya (53,970) districts were off set by just Mongu district (111,159).
Similarly, a PF vote advantage in Chililabobwe (29,638) was cut down by just Kabompo (32,398).
Now given that MMD had a ratio of 7 to 1 win advantage in its stronghold i.e. North-Western, Eastern and Central province rural districts, while PF had only a ratio advantage of 2 to 1 in its stronghold Lusaka, Copperbelt, Luapula and Northern provinces, MMD had in theory won the polls before Zambian even went for polls.
Meanwhile, dominance of UPND in Southern province district makes all eligible voters in the polls as good as spoiled votes.
The most interesting point however is that Sata and HH knew that they needed to unite to win but choose not to and they have been punished for that. So the best they can do is to accept and congratulate MMD and its candidate His Excellence the 4th President of the Republic of Zambia Mr Rupiah Banda. The country needs to move on.
Please note that this analysis was based on eligible registered votes publicly available prior to elections.
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