A previously unreleased survey of voting preferences in Kenya’s recent national elections will be presented at briefings in Washington on July 8 and 9.

Clark Gibson and James Long, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, conducted a nationwide exit poll the day of Kenya’s 2007 general election in December. Their representative sample of 5,495 registered voters predicted a victory of nearly 6 percent for the challenger, Raila Odinga, over President Mwai Kibaki. When the Kenyan Electoral Commission announced the re-election of the incumbent by 2.28 percent there were widespread claims of electoral rigging, and the subsequent post-election violence resulted in more than 1,200 dead and 600,000 displaced.

The poll was a joint project of the International Republican Institute and Strategic Research, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development.

The UC San Diego researchers will discuss what the survey reveals about Kenya, elections in Africa. and the future of democracy in the region when they speak at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on July 8 at 2 p.m. and at the School for Advanced International Studies, of Johns Hopkins University, on July 9 at noon. These talks are open to the press and public.