As Ghana’s Dec 7, 2024 elections draw closer, all the signs indicate that Ghana’s ruling party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will fail in its attempt to be the first party in the country’s history to win three straight national elections. The deck is stacked against it at every turn, largely due to the NPP’s own making.
The NPP’s chances are narrowed by voters’ discontent on several issues including the economy, cost of living, corruption and illegal mining.
As the 2024 general election cycle kicked off, the NPP adopted the slogan ‘Breaking The Eight’. This slogan refers to the fact that since 1992 when Ghana returned to democracy, the two major parties, NPP and NDC (National Democratic Congress), have shared power in unbroken two-term cycles, beginning with Jerry Rawlings of the NDC winning two terms in 1992 and 1996.
Before we go into all the reasons why the NPP are likely to lose in December, let us quickly look at the major candidates.
The candidates
In the blue corner, we have Mahamudu Bawumia of the NPP. He is the current vice president and a former deputy governor of Ghana’s Central Bank. In the green corner, we have John Dramani Mahama, who is likely to be a familiar name to followers of Ghanaian politics. Mahama is the former president of Ghana and was the Vice President of the late John Atta Mills. When Mills died in 2012, Mahama completed his term and won the following general election. He failed to win re-election in 2016 when he lost to the current president Nana Akufo-Addo and lost again in 2020 to the same man. Thus, he will be running in his fourth straight national election just after his 66th birthday in November.
There are two other candidates who are worth mentioning: Alan Kyerematen and Nana Kwame Bediako, who are both running as independents. Together, they may take up as much as 10% of the votes according to a poll by Global Information Analytics (more on this poll later). Kyerematen in particular is important because he is a founding member of the NPP, but broke away from the party to run as an independent candidate after losing the primary to Bawumia. He now leads the Movement for Change and is likely to eat into the votes of the NPP. Bediako is a somewhat eccentric real estate developer.
The issues
The state of the economy and cost of living is the top issue in the election. The NPP has failed on both counts. Inflation in the country has been rising over the last couple of years, reaching 54% in 2022. This led to widespread protests, with some calling for Akufo-Addo’s resignation. It has since cooled to an average of 23% so far this year, but people are still hurting because there are few good jobs. Growth also slowed to 2.9% as recently as last year. On both key metrics, the NPP are doing worse than the NDC.
Overall economic management has also been poor. Skyrocketing debt meant that Ghana had to default and restructure its foreign debt, alongside going to the IMF for a $3 billion dollar bailout. Domestic creditors also felt the pinch.
On top of this, the Akufo-Addo administration is also seen as corrupt, being enmeshed in one scandal after another. From scandals concerning procurement of COVID vaccines to royalties of gold mining, to a minister being found with foreign exchange in her home and many more, previous pledges by the NPP to fight corruption are now seen as hollow.
In fact, the NDC has gone the extra mile to list NPP scandals that will be investigated if they win power in December, a pledge that will surely have their opponents shifting uncomfortably in their seats.
There is another scandal that has quickly gained increased salience for Ghana’s voters. Illegal mining, known locally as galamsey, has rocked the country and become an issue for a growing number of voters. Due to the rising price of gold globally, illegal mining has gotten out of control in the country, poisoning water sources and depriving the government of much needed revenue because a lot of the illegally mined gold is smuggled out of the country.
Protests have erupted under the hashtag #StopGalamsey. It has become another example of a failed pledge by the NPP government, who had previously said they would tackle the issue. One of the reasons they cannot do so is that top NPP party members are heavily involved in illegal mining.
Ghana’s democratic culture
Ghana has earned a reputation for a robust democratic culture, which has made it a stable, competitive democracy on a continent that has too few of such examples. This stability is reflected in several measures of democracy. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2023 Democracy Index, for example, Ghana ranks 65th out of 167 countries, 5th on the continent and first in West Africa.
In the EIU classification, countries with a score between 8 and 10 are full democracies, while countries with a score between 6 and 8 are flawed democracies. Hybrid democracies have scores between 4 and 6. Authoritarian systems of government have scores of 4 and below.
Ghana’s position as a role model of democracy in West Africa is even more critical now, with the rash of coups on the continent between 2020 and 2023. Many of those coups are the result of attempts at democratisation which were sabotaged by authoritarian sit-tight leaders. A democratic Ghana is needed more than ever.
The data
Elections in Ghana tend to be competitive. If no candidate reaches the 50% + 1 threshold, a run-off is called three weeks after the first ballot. In the eight presidential elections since 1992, there have been two run-offs, in 2000 and 2008. The 2008 run-off was so close that it was decided by just 40,000 votes out of 9 million votes cast, translating to 0.46%. 2008 was also the last time the presidency was contested by two non-incumbents.
However, if the recent poll by Global Info Analytics (GIA) on Ghana’s presidential election is correct, this year’s vote may not be as close as recent elections. The NPP has many causes for worry. The headline result of the poll is that Mahama leads Bawumia by nearly 14%, but that’s only the beginning.
The NPP appears to have a significant enthusiasm gap. According to the poll, 88% of NPP-affiliated voters say they will vote for Bawumia, while 96% of NDC voters say they will vote for Mahama. Even among those who did not disclose their party affiliation to the pollster, Mahama has a big lead of 31 points.
In the NPP stronghold of Ashanti region, things get even worse. NPP’s vote share in the region has averaged 74% since 2000 and they are targeting 85% this time around. This poll puts their support as low as 66%, which would mean almost certain defeat for the party in December. It would appear that above 72.5% vote share in Ashanti region is the minimum the party will need to secure victory. In the 2008 and 2012 elections they lost, the NPP support in Ashanti was 72.5% and 70.9% respectively.
These dire data points are being driven by fundamental discontent. 62% of Ghanaians, according to GIA, think the country is going in the wrong direction, while only 31% think the country is going in the right direction. Data from Afrobarometer paints an even starker picture. Its survey conducted in 2022 showed that a whooping 87% of Ghanaians thought the country was going in the wrong direction. This survey occurred during protests concerning the cost of living in the country.
Similar levels of discontent have been seen in Ghana in 2014/2015 when 81.6% of Ghanaians thought the country was going in the wrong direction. Interestingly, that was when John Mahama was president and it foretold a change in government. The shoe is now on the other foot.
Throughout the GIA document, there is nary a good sign for the incumbent NPP. 49% of the nearly 8,000 respondents rate the government’s performance as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. 46% say their economic condition has worsened compared to the last 12 months. 52% say that corruption is getting worse. On and on and on it goes.
With less than seven weeks to the elections, there appears to be fairly little scope to change minds in either direction. 73% of respondents in the poll say they are unlikely to change their minds, with 11% saying they are likely to. Identifying those voters may be the key to preventing an NDC victory in the first round.
However, even in a hypothetical run-off with only two candidates to choose from, the NPP and Bawumia do not fare much better. The GIA poll respondents would favour the NDC by 55%-45% in that scenario.
Mahama returns?
If this survey by GIA is close to the reality on the ground, it makes grim reading for the NPP. They are not only fighting against historical precedent but also against their own performance in office which has left a lot to be desired. On top of that, their candidate is the current vice-president which makes it impossible to separate him from the administration in any meaningful way.
The stage appears set for a change in government in the land of the Black Star. The eight is likely to remain unbroken.