The latest opinion poll on expected voting trends in the presidential elections maintains Yoweri Museveni in the lead with a comfortable margin for victory next week.
The poll conducted by research firm, Afrobarometer, puts support for Museveni at 65 percent. He is trailed by Kizza Besigye who only received 15 percent support of the 2,000 people questioned from 250 villages across Uganda.
The figures represent a one percent boost in support for Museveni since the last Afrobarometer polls were released in December last year.
In this respect, the Inter Party Cooperation candidate Kizza Besigye fared much better. His 16 percent marks a three percent boost in support from December.
According to the opinion poll Norbert Mao of the Democratic Party is in third place with four percent support for his presidential election bid, up from three percent last year.
In fourth and fifth place are Olara Otunnu of the Uganda People's Congress and Betty Kamya of the Uganda Federal Alliance. Otunnu's three percent hasn't increased since December, while Kamya has moved up by one percent.
The remaining three presidential candidates – Abed Bwanika of the People's Democratic Party, Bidandi Ssali of the Peoples Progressive Party and independent Sam Lubega – all scored too low to register on the Afrobarometer radar and were assigned zero percent.
Robert Sentamu, the Managing Director of Wilsken Agencies the local research agent for Afrobarometer, told a news conference in Kampala that the top issues that influenced respondents' choices were leadership skills, policy promises, past governing experiences and personal integrity. He said the same respondents rejected a candidate based poor or unrealistic policies, lack of leadership skills and lack of governance experience.
The National Resistance Movement is celebrating its performance in the poll.
NRM deputy spokesperson Ofwono Opondo says the party is excited about the prospect of winning majority support in northern Uganda for the first time. He says this reflects growing acceptance of NRM's development programs in the region.
Opondo says that with the LRA war over, the NRM has no reason to lose northern Uganda.
The opposition has however rejected the opinion polls as unscientific and the result of fear of state power.
Hussein Kyanjo, head of the Inter Party Cooperation political communications bureau, reasons that many Ugandans are scared of answering any questions that would put them at odds with the ruling government. He says this could account for the low opposition figures.
Kyanjo says the cooperation won't be derailed by the poll and will focus its effort on the remaining campaign days.
Kenneth Kakande, spokesperson for the Democratic Party, says all opinion polls conducted in Uganda are unrealistic. He says he is sure that his presidential candidate, Norbert Mao, has much more than the four percent assigned to him.
The survey, which was sponsored by the Deepening Democracy Programme, selected respondents from 71 percent of the districts in Uganda.
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