New Vision starts series on Ugandan's expectations from leaders in 2026 election

With barely six months left to the country’s 2026 general election, Ugandan citizens have a long list of pressing concerns that they want their leaders to address.

From health, unemployment to agriculture or poverty, New Vision has compiled the top 10 critical concerns voiced by respondents during a recent Vision Group public opinion poll.

Starting this weekend, New Vision will publish an in-depth article every day highlighting each of the 10 issues in detail, as put forward by voters.

How the survey was conducted 

The poll was conducted by Vision Group’s research team between March and May, 2025, covering a sample size of 6,006 Ugandans countrywide.

They were each asked the question: “In your opinion, which issues are affecting this community?”

To ensure national representation, the Vision Group research team sampled eligible Ugandan voters from across 58 districts.

Only citizens possessing a valid National Identification Card and aged 18 years and above were sampled. The survey covered all 17 sub-regions of Uganda. 

The respondents were randomly sampled from both rural and urban areas. Of the total respondents, 2,433 were from urban areas, while 3,573 respondents were picked from rural areas.

According to the survey, the majority of the respondents were between the age of 25 and 29 years (1,201) and 30 and 34 years (1,058). Only 19 of the total sampled respondents refused to respond to the questions.

New Vision editor-in-chief Barbara Kaija said the Citizens Manifesto is a compilation of Ugandan views collected by a team of professional researchers ahead of the national election.

On the credibility of the survey, Kaija said: “This is a scientific survey and it was not influenced by anybody, not even the government is informed when we are doing this research. Any other researcher is free to do their research for comparison. I am very confident of the results because in the past, similar surveys done by New Vision have not been so different from the final election results.”

The Vision Group research department has long experience in carrying out market research and opinion polling. An opinion poll, often referred to as a survey or a poll, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample.

Candidate choices 

In the first part of the opinion poll, the respondents were asked about their candidate choices for the position of president and MP in the forthcoming elections.

The poll results indicated that the incumbent, President Yoweri Museveni, would win the election with a 73% margin if elections were held at the time the poll was conducted.
National Unity Platform (NUP) president Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine would come second with 19% of the vote, the poll findings indicated.

However, this was way before the candidates were even formally nominated by their respective political parties and the Electoral Commission (EC). The NRM and NUP have since nominated Museveni and Kyagulanyi as party presidential flag bearers, respectively.

This week, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) also nominated Budadiri West MP and party secretary general, Nathan Nandala Mafabi, unopposed as the party’s presidential flag bearer for 2026.

This was after the party president, Eng. Patrick Amuriat Oboi, stepped down from the race.

The EC has set the nomination date for presidential contenders on September 23 to 24, 2025.

According to the EC roadmap, Ugandans will elect their political representatives between January 12 and February 9, next year. Campaigns will kick off in September this year and end in early January next year.