Figure 7: Voting intentions in the presidential election | Zimbabwe | July 2018 100% 80% 60% 40% 40% 37% 20% 20% 3% 0% ZANU-PF MDC-T Chamisa/Alliance Refused/Don't know/Will not vote Other parties It is important to remember that an increment of uncertainty surrounds all figures in any survey. In this case, the confidence interval is +/-2 percentage points, which is the survey’s margin of sampling error. Thus, based on the results reported in the previous paragraph, the distribution of intended votes for Mnangagwa lay in the range of 38%-42% and the distribution of intended votes for Chamisa lay in the range of 35%-39%. Thus, as of early July, it was probable that Mnangagwa was ahead, though it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Chamisa had taken the lead. In other words, the presidential race tightened significantly between early May and early July. At the prior date, we reported that the ZANU-PF enjoyed a clear double-digit lead of 11 percentage points (42% to the MDC’s 31%). Just two months later, the gap had closed to 3 percentage points. By any measure, this is a considerable swing in favour of the challenger. Any further projection of this momentum into the final weeks of the campaign would reduce the gap between the contenders within the survey’s margin of error (+/-2 percentage points), rendering the election too close to call. In one important respect, elections in Zimbabwe are a tale of two contests. Voting patterns diverge dramatically depending on where voters live, principally in rural or urban areas. As of early July, the ZANU-PF commanded a healthy 18-point lead in citizens’ stated voting intentions across Zimbabwe’s rural areas (48% vs. the MDC’s 30%). The tables were turned in urban areas, where the MDC (party plus Alliance) was ahead by the considerable margin of 23 percentage points (49% vs. 26%) (Figure 8). But the harsh reality of Zimbabwe’s demography must be borne in mind in evaluating these results: Almost twice as many people reside in areas classified as rural as live in areas deemed urban (63% vs. 37%). As urban elites too often forget, this demographic imbalance endows the ZANU-PF with a built-in electoral advantage. Copyright ©2018 7