Participation model
People choose voluntarily to visit TryVote and submit a mock vote. Participation is self-selected, so the user base is not designed to represent Nigeria’s electorate statistically.
What is counted
Accepted submissions contribute to the overall TryVote presidential total. For people selecting one of Nigeria’s 36 states or FCT, TryVote also maintains aggregate presidential participation by location; eligible states can additionally have a governorship simulation. FCT does not have a governorship simulation.
Nigerians outside Nigeria can select Nigerian Diaspora / Outside Nigeria. Diaspora presidential responses contribute to the overall TryVote presidential total but are stored and displayed as a separate aggregate location. They are not included in state-map, state-ranking or “support by state” analysis, and no governorship ballot is shown for the diaspora option. Participation on TryVote does not imply that diaspora voting is available in Nigeria’s official elections.
What is not a TryVote result
TryVote percentages are not official election results, projections, exit polls or scientifically representative polling. They should not be used to claim that a candidate would receive the same level of support in an official election.
Candidate information
The presidential ballot follows INEC’s final list of 18 candidates, published on 12 September 2026. Governorship ballots are labelled by verification status because their final list is separate and may still be amended. If an official amendment or court order changes a field, TryVote updates the active ballot without assigning a superseded candidate’s stored count to a different person.
Integrity measures
TryVote uses multiple controls to reduce obvious abuse, including a browser marker after a successful submission, short-lived signed challenges, replay protection, request-rate controls, cross-site request checks and a hidden bot-detection field.
These controls are designed to limit repeated or automated submissions without requiring a named voter account. Because TryVote is anonymous, it cannot perfectly prove that every accepted submission corresponds to one unique human being.
Privacy by design
Public results use aggregate counts. TryVote does not need a public per-voter profile to show results, and the production design avoids storing a ballot record that directly ties a person or browser identity to their selected location, presidential choice and governorship choice.
Percentages and updates
Displayed percentages are derived from the accepted aggregate votes in the relevant result set. They can change whenever new accepted submissions are recorded.
Interpretation
The most appropriate interpretation is: “Among people who voluntarily participated on TryVote, this was the distribution of accepted mock votes at that time.”