A political analyst Humphreys Mvula has downplayed the possibility of opinion polls having an influence on voters in the May 21, 2019 Tripartite Elections.

A recently released research report by the UK based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has predicted that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its torch bearer President Peter Mutharika will win in the May 21 elections.

The report says Mutharika will secure re-election as there is no serious threat to him.

However, when commenting on the EIU report, Mvula said there are always questions as to how the polls were conducted and what factors influenced the outcome of the polls.

“It depends on several factors and some of these factors are the size of the sample, what was the question, what was the target population, is it women, youth or children? So in the absence of the methodology document, it is difficult to give a fair analysis,” Mvula said.

Mvula also said political parties that are tipped for victory in the presidential elections have an uphill task of doing issue based campaign and not to rely on what they have been told by opinion polls.

This is not the time that the EIU has released such polls favouring the DPP presidential hopeful in a space of three years.