Reelecting William Samoei Ruto

Electoral politics is a game of numbers, and right now the numbers and fundamentals favor William Ruto

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This is the second installment in a four part series to mark the first anniversary of the June 25, 2024 protests. You can read the first post here. The third post will speculate on how Ruto might lose in 2027, incumbency advantage notwithstanding. The final post will offer a general commentary on how the current moment fits within the wider historical political economy of Kenya. For background, be sure to read the four pieces from last year in the aftermath of the protests here, here, here, and here.

I: A brilliant campaigner, but a terrible administrator

William Ruto governs like an itinerant medieval monarch, and not like the president of a modern democratic state in the age of formal administrative-bureaucratic systems and mass media. He’s constantly on the move, eager to be seen and adored by crowds during tours of specific ethnic voting blocs, make roadside policy pronouncements (that often simply get ignored by bureaucrats), dish out hefty donations at churches and funerals, or launch mostly soon-to-be-stalled “development” projects. And when he’s not on the move, he likes to host delegations of ethnic leaders from different parts of the country at State House Nairobi, or the various state lodges across the country — all in an effort to herd voters into their respective ethnic pens ahead of the 2027 general election.

President William Ruto receiving a gift from residents of Homabay County during a recent regional tour.

Ruto’s constant campaigning reflects both his personality type (he loves direct adoration from crowds) and political necessity. In just over two years, his administration’s mishandling of economic reforms and politics has eroded both his approval ratings and overall state legitimacy, thereby necessitating the constant campaigning to show that he still has both popular and elite support.

As I argued in the first installment (see here), the administration’s revenue obsession blinded it to the realities of policy reforms. In short, it took on multiple major changes than the system or elite attention could accommodate (housing, healthcare, education, agriculture, and tax policy); and failed miserably at communicating and convincing Kenyans of its intentions, and therefore building a constituency to support specific reforms. It quickly became clear to anyone watching that the goal of the reforms wasn’t to improve service delivery, but to increase government revenue, meet externally-imposed targets, and pay for politicians’ obscenely opulent lifestyles.

Both failures highlight what, in my view, is the president’s two biggest problems: the quality of human capital around him and his style of management.

To be blunt, most of the president’s men and women lack the knowledge or interest in getting things done on behalf of their boss. To make matters worse, the president is an infamous micromanager who seldom delegates (or takes advise). This means that most government operations rise or fall on the president’s availability and/or ability to make the right call. It also means that no one in the administration has the power to get anything done. On key decisions — including mundane decisions about procurement or facilitation of private investments — everyone sits on their hands guessing what the president might do (unless, of course, it’s a deal that generates payoffs for everyone). In addition to the well-documented deterioration in quality of public service delivery, you also see the president’s self-inflicted principal-agent problems reflected in the high turner rates at the cabinet and senior levels of the bureaucracy.

Bizarrely, as president Ruto has also revealed himself to be terrible at managing politics (again, this is a quality of human capital problem in the president’s team). Ruto the president is a far cry from the brilliant tactician and communicator of the 2022 campaign. He totally misjudged public opinion regarding his taxation and reforms agenda (State House needs an independent pollster). In addition, the impeachment of his deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, led to the loss of a core constituency that delivered the presidency in 2022. The big gamble was that Gachagua would fade into oblivion once he didn’t have access to state resources as the Deputy President. Instead, Gachagua leveraged his victimhood into emerging as the ethnic kingpin in much of Central Kenya; and the unofficial leader of the anti-Ruto brigade.

Combined, the failure to deliver on campaign promises and mishandling of politics has left the administration exposed to a constant drumbeat of bad press in both the mainstream and new media. This partially fuels the anger that has repeatedly driven lots of young people to the streets.

Yet despite all this, Ruto stands a very good chance of getting re-elected in 2027. How’s that possible?

II: Ruto’s critics should sober up to the reality that, despite his mediocre performance so far, the fundamentals still favor his reelection in 2027

In light of the developments in Kenyan politics since Ruto’s ascent to the presidency, there are those who contest the notion that 2022 presented a different kind of presidential election; arguing that ethnicity was ultimately the deciding factor. I disagree.

I believe that 2022 marked a watershed moment in Kenyan presidential politics — for two reasons. First, it showed that issue-based campaigning works (even if layered onto standard models of ethnic mobilization). Second, the campaign went a long way in demystifying the presidency and raising voters’ expectations. His questionable sincerity notwithstanding, a lot of Kenyans believed in the possibility of using Ruto as a portal to escape the country’s socio-economic stagnation. It says a lot that despite beating Raila Odinga by a mere 233,311 votes, Ruto’s victory felt like it was much bigger. He ran against the combined force of Odinga, Kenyatta, and much of the Kenyan establishment and beat them. Along the way, his compelling populist “hustlers vs dynasties” messaging held the promise of reshaping Kenyan electoral politics away from the fixation on “ethnic census” elections. To reiterate, ethnicity was still a dominant organizing principle in Ruto’s coalition building; but it was the clever layering of populist economic messaging onto the dominant mental model of how Kenyan politics works that won the day.

These two factors partially explain the intensity and swiftness of the backlash Ruto faced when it became clear that he was not interested/able to deliver the structural changes he promised. It didn’t matter that he had inherited a terrible fiscal crisis from Kenyatta (in fairness, Ruto shares blame for the mess. He was Kenyatta’s Deputy for a decade and accumulated his own share of scandals during that period).

Oddly, the Ruto administration seems unable to see the true origins of the backlash against the president, and have instead chosen to chase ethnic shadows and unleash state-sponsored violence against citizens in the wake of recent mass protests. As Ngala Chome states, it is now abundantly clear that the administration is not interested in dialogue as a mechanism for ending youth protests across the country. Lawfare and violent repression (including disappearances and extra-judicial killings) are the preferred tools:

President William Ruto’s efforts to reassure the public about the government’s plans to tackle ballooning public debt, boost employment, and drive development have largely been met with ridicule, scepticism, and resistance. An analysis of Kenya’s public discourse – especially on social media – since mid-2024 shows that young people are refusing to buy into his government’s rhetoric. Words alone, will not change how young people think and feel.

Partly as a result, there has been a steady escalation in the intimidation of individuals who use digital platforms to engage publicly…

… These arrests followed public denunciations of critical voices from the President, cabinet ministers, security officials and regime loyalists, targeting a growing wave of youth-led activism that is organised largely through social media. This activism has remained decentralised and leaderless, making it hard to demobilise and co-opt. Within this context, the Computer Misuse and Cybercrimes Act, No. 5 of 2018 has become the regime’s preferred legal tool. The law’s lack of clear safeguards has cast a shadow over content created in public interest—especially when it challenges authority or mobilises citizens. In effect, the law enables the state to carry out subtle but effective repression through arrests, intimidation, and legally ambiguous enforcement.

Protestors rush Boniface Kariuki to hospital. Kariuki, a Nairobi hawker who was shot in the head by police during the June 25, 2025 protests, later succumbed to his injuries. In total, at least 16 people were killed nationwide during the protests. Source: Daily Nation

With these factors in mind, it’s possible to see how Ruto will likely emerge victorious in 2027 despite his sagging approval numbers.

All Ruto needs to win in 2027 is to successfully extinguish Kenyans’ hopes of structural change on both the economic and political fronts. With regard to the economy, you see this strategy in his tight embrace of informality, a handouts culture, official tolerance of organized criminality (Kenya’s smuggling and money laundering industries are humming), and the idea that development happens at the discretion of the president. Extinguishing hopes of rapid economic mobility will help lower expectations, which in turn will allow Ruto to run on the reality of a slowly improving economic environment. He’ll have overseen annual growth rates of about 5%, avoided default, facilitated the creation of lots of informal sector jobs (not to mention his “labor export” policy), and helped lower inflation. These stats are real, and should not be dismissed by Ruto’s detractors. While the Kenyan economy isn’t where it should be, it’s also not going to hell in a hand basket. And that’s something that Ruto should be able to exploit to his advantage in 2027.

Then there’s ethnic politics. Here, all Ruto needs is to limit the extent of “tribeless” political mobilization and force a reset to the “factory settings” of negative political ethnicity ahead of 2027. An “ethnic census” election would allow Ruto to use state resources to buy off a sufficient number of ethnic kingpins and to cobble together a minimum winning coalition. It helps that Ruto is already reputable for generosity in sharing governance debts (to the detriment of PFM and service delivery, of course), in contrast to the allegedly stingy Odinga and Kenyatta. This strategy will likely be aided by the political style of his key bogeyman, the impeached former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. In the quest to become the Mt. Kenya ethnic kingpin (in competition against Kenyatta and others), Gachagua has adopted a naked ethnocentrism that evokes in many quarters a sense of Mt. Kenya entitlement to the presidency (Mt. Kenya region, roughly 22% of the population, has “controlled” the presidency 55% of the time since independence). It is for this reason that Ruto’s allies have sought to cast recent protests as the machinations of an entitled Mt. Kenya cabal out to execute a regime change, as opposed to what they really are: a national expression of frustration with his administration.

If he’s successful in extinguishing aspirations for a better economy and politics, Ruto will then be able to deploy his charisma and superior campaigning abilities on road to victory. He will have created the opening to christen himself as the candidate of ethnic inclusion and national redistribution, running against an aggregate of regional ethnic kingpins. Indeed, there is research to support this strategy — African incumbents tend to have a relatively easier time nationalizing their political parties compared to opposition leaders.

In this scenario 2027 will be a cynical affair marked by state-sponsored violence to suppress voter turnout, excessive ethnicity-based fear-mongering, and very little discussion of the economy and related major policy initiatives.

How would anyone vote for such a platform? It’s important to remember that right now Ruto is struggling as an incumbent against hypothetical and seemingly “perfect” alternatives. Things will certainly change when those alternatives become real candidates. It’s also fair to say that right now the possible alternatives — whether among traditional politicians or new entrants — aren’t a slum dunk. The traditional politicians on offer have just as much baggage as Ruto, but lack his national reach and charisma. On their part, the relatively new entrants continue to display astonishing obtuseness about how electoral politics works in Kenya. For example, none appear to be in the least interested in building the mobilization infrastructure (voter registration, attention to voters’ material needs, and constant outreach using trusted brokers and intermediaries) needed to dislodge a charismatic incumbent who is also indefatigable on the campaign trail. They also do not seem to understand that the Kenyan electorate is still mostly rural. Against such an opposition, it’s not hard to see how Ruto will be able to avoid a loss in 2027.

III: Ruto vs the vibes

Of course a lot can change in two years. The opposition might wisen up and craft a formidable united challenge against President Ruto (see next post), or the economy could take a turn for the worse. It’s also possible that the administration’s unconscionably violent response to protests (backed by inflammatory rhetoric from the highest levels of government) and blatant disregard for the rule of law will anger enough voters to force elite defections against Ruto.

Even with these developments, Ruto will still be the master of his own political destiny. His overarching advantage is that all he has to do is defeat his detractors’ positive vibes about the possibility of a better Kenya. That will allow him to lower voters’ expectations about the economy and public service delivery; and to increase the salience of ethnicity as a mobilization strategy. Unfortunately, this kind of cynicism is very likely to win. While it’s true that (urban) Kenyans are increasingly less attached to ethnic identities, all it takes is a sense that everyone else will be voting along ethnic lines to force a large share of voters back into their ethnic cocoons for safety at the expense of attention to the economy, the rule of law, and other noble national aspirations. This strategy applies to elites and the masses alike. Finally, I should emphasize that this is a strategy that will be very familiar to Ruto, having been at the heart of its deployment in multiple elections going back to 1992.