Malawi Congress Party (MCP) has questioned the credibility of opinion polls ahead of the September 16 General Election, accusing opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of sponsoring a fresh one to project it as a winner.
But DPP has shot back and described the governing party as ‘a crybaby’ bent on seeking sympathy from voters.
On the other hand, political pundits have suggested to the parties to task their directorates of research to ascertain the credibility of opinion polls.
In July this year, MCP, which ascended to power backed by the now disintegrated Tonse Alliance in the June 2020 court-sanctioned fresh presidential election after 26 years in opposition, also branded election opinion polls as manipulated after Institute of Public Opinion and Research (Ipor) released its pre-election survey results.
Ipor said its survey, conducted between July 6 and 20 2025, showed that if elections were held during the period, DPP presidential candidate Peter Mutharika could get 43 percent of the vote followed by incumbent President Lazarus Chakwera of MCP at 26 percent while UTM Party’s Dalitso Kabambe was given a paltry five percent.
During a whistle-stop rally at Mpingu Trading Centre in Lilongwe and many other centres yesterday where Chakwera was present, MCP secretary general Richard Chimwendo Banda said MCP was aware of the people involved in the alleged scheme.
He said: “You will hear about this tomorrow [today] or the other day. The DPP has found a new team to do fake research for it. They want that survey to show that Mutharika will win. They did the same recently, but people didn’t listen to them.
“They have now engaged some foreign people, just to confuse Malawians. Let me say this, I know the one who has sponsored this and I know where they are meeting to come up with this fake survey.”
When contacted to provide finer details on his claim, Chimwendo Banda, who is Minister of Local Government, Unity and Culture, insisted that DPP had embarked on a dubious survey.
He said: “I know that a foreign institution is sponsoring this group [pollster] based in Zomba. It provided the money two weeks ago. Sadly, their sample involves people who are not even registered to vote.
“All they want is to confuse people. They want to portray that Mutharika will win, but that will not happen because we know what they are doing.”
But DPP spokesperson Shadric Namalomba said in an interview yesterday that his party was simply a recipient of survey results.
He said: “Just like MCP, we also just receive the survey results. It’s universities and others which do the surveys. When we get the results and where we are told that we are leading, we don’t relax, but work hard so that we consolidate that.
“When we are told we are lagging, we don’t give up, but continue engaging the grass roots to do well next time. We are not involved and we don’t know anything.”
Weighing in, governance commentator Undule Mwakasungula said some researchers act as political consultants by framing data to fit their client’s narrative.
“This is why polls near elections often feel less like academic exercises and more like campaign tools. They can be released at strategic moments to boost one side’s morale or crush another’s spirit,” he said.
But Political Science Association spokesperson Mavuto Bamusi argued that MCP and DPP were playing a game of political psychology.
“It is hard to ascertain if surveys and opinion polls are paid for by interested political actors. This requires evidence because credible institutions normally use independent sources of funding to conduct surveys,” he said.
In a separate interview, political pundit Wonderful Mkhutche said it was interesting that politicians only expect survey results to favour them.
He said: “We need to grow into a democracy that makes use of survey results to inform our political actions. But if politicians are in the forefront rubbishing the survey results, we will not grow as a democracy.
“Yes, some surveys are paid for in order to influence public perception. But when a survey result is from either Ipor or Afrobarometer, we need to trust the credibility of the results.”
Ironically, in June 2020 Ipor released findings of a 2020 Pre-election and Governance Survey which predicted outright victory for Tonse Alliance presidential candidate Lazarus Chakwera and his running mate Saulos Chilima. The poll gave Tonse Alliance an 18-point lead over the DPP-United Democratic Front partnership of president Peter Mutharika and Atupele Muluzi. In the survey, Ipor sampled 1 346 respondents and the results showed that the Chakwera-Chilima pair would get up to 58 percent while that of Mutharika and Atupele would amass 38 percent.
Ipor’s survey findings were not far from the official results as Malawi Electoral Commission declared Chakwera winner of the election with 2 607 043 votes, representing 58.7 percent while Mutharika had 1 751 877 votes or 38 percent and Peter Kuwani of Mbakuwaku Movement for Development came third with 32 456 votes.
