The Jubilee Party battle plan identifies 13 swing-vote counties it believes will decide the election on August 8.
According to strategy documents seen by the Star, the party also has established 17 counties as core Jubilee zones, and the remaining 17 as core NASA zones.
The 13 counties contain 4.75 million of the 18.12 million voters registered by February 7 when the IEBC announced results of the third week of voter registration.
Listing has been extended to Sunday.
Before the formation of NASA, Cord also zoned the country into Strongholds, Battlegrounds and Red Zones (JP) to reduce its internal competition.
The 17 core Jubilee counties have a total of 6,851,826 voters, while those categorised as NASA turf have 6,520,088 voters.
“These county zones should be used to interpret voter registration figures. Core and swing clusters have been allocated due to past voting patterns and tribal and clan demographics within particular counties,” a Jubilee strategist told the Star.
However, Jubilee has decided not to concentrate on three swing counties that they believe are more inclined toward the opposition.
“In the swing, apart from Narok, Kisii and Nyamira, the rest are our swing. Cord knows it,” said the Jubilee strategist who requested anonymity as he is not an authorised spokesman.
Narok has 318,304 registered voters and Jubilee has been having difficult converting the area into a Jubilee zone.
In 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta got 109,413 (46 per cent) of Narok votes, while Cord leader Raila Odinga got 118,623 (46 per cent).
Kisii has 503,148 registered voters and in the last election, Uhuru got 95,596 votes, while Raila got 236,831 of the 412,945 votes cast then.
By last week’s update by IEBC, Nyamira had listed 22,612 new voters, bringing total registered to 260,882.
In 2013, Uhuru got 54,071 votes in Nyamira, while Raila netted 121,590.
Nairobi is the other major swing county identified by Jubilee. It has 2,094,094 voters. Uhuru got 47 per cent of the votes and Raila got 49 per cent.
Also on the list is Garissa with 144,039 voters. Uhuru and Raila also split the vote almost equally.
Other counties in the list are Wajir (143,812 votes), Mandera (151,431), Marsabit (134,232), Isiolo (66,628), Turkana (175,113), Samburu (76,031) Trans Nzoia (313,174) and Kajiado (373,010).
The ‘safe’ counties that strategists have placed in the Jubilee camp are Baringo, Bomet, Elgeyo Marakwet, Embu, Kericho, Kiambu, Laikipia, Meru, Muranga, Nakuru, Nandi, Kirinyaga, Nyandarua, Nyeri, Tharaka Nithi, Uasin Gishu and West Pokot,
The NASA core counties are Mombasa, Kilifi, Kitui, Kwale, Lamu,Taita Taveta,Tana River, Machakos, Makueni, Kakamega and Vihiga.
The rest are Bungoma, Busia, Kisumu, Homa Bay, Migori. and Siaya.
In 2013, Uhuru won the majority vote in 21 counties, while Raila won in 26 counties, plus the diaspora which had 15,254 votes. Diaspora registration begins next week.
Strategists have calculated that Jubilee would kick off the election with a head start of 331,838 votes — if there were 100 per cent turn out in the core counties of the two sides.
They are also 70 per cent of the 4.75 million votes in the swing counties.
In 2013, some 12,330,028 Kenyans, representing 86 per cent of the registered voters, cast their ballots.
Uhuru won the election with 6,173,433 votes, which was 50.5 per cent of the total. Raila came second with 5,340,546 (43.7 per cent).
After extended voter registration ends on Sunday, the Jubilee team will assess the totals and draw up a campaign programme specific to its strongholds and the swing counties.
In addition, another programme will be drawn up to continue raiding opposition strongholds by launching development projects and promising more to come.
Despite managing to poach opposition MPs from Ukambani and the Coast, Jubilee still lists the region’s counties as opposition strongholds.
As the Jubilee Party launched in September last year, 35 opposition MPs and four governors defected to join Uhuru’s reelection outfit.
The rebels publicly decamped from ODM, Kanu, Wiper and Ford Kenya and were celebrated at JP’s first National Delegates Convention at Kasarani Stadium.
They were welcomed by Deputy President William Ruto who has insisted that Jubilee will win the Presidency with as much as 70 per cent in the first round.
“Our development record over three years cannot be compared to any government since independence because we have expanded the economy and directly addressed issues that affect our people,” Ruto said recently as he urged people to register in the Rift Valley.
Before NASA was formed, Cord also zoned the country into three broad regions to guide joint nominations and reverse Jubilee’s tyranny of numbers. They are Strongholds, Battlegrounds, and Red Zones.
Opposition think tank analysts say the strategy would also bolster Cord’s presidential flagbearer’s bid to unseat Uhuru — by eliminating the fallout from nominations that undermined Raila’s presidential bid in 2013.
According to the plan, the Cord affiliate parties — ODM, Wiper and Ford Kenya — would only fight it out in the primaries in the “battlegrounds” and “red zones” to come up with the coalition’s candidates.
Battlegrounds are areas where the three parties are believed to have a shared popularity, such as Northeastern and Nairobi.
However, the red zones are perceived Jubilee turf, especially in Central and the Rift Valley.
The strategy listed Western, Nyanza and Coast as strongholds of Raila’s ODM. All the three counties in Ukambani are considered Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper turf.
Source: The Star, Kenya