9.4% of voters doubt NPP would fulfil campaign promises – Poll reveals

A total of 9.4 per cent Ghanaians voters have cast doubt over the New Patriotic Party’s ability to fulfil its 2016 electoral promises, the latest opinion poll by Ben Ephson claims.

This, according to the pollster, explains the one-touch victory prediction for the John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress in the December 7 presidential election with 52.4 per cent votes.

“The last two polls between October 16 and November 16, 2016 that virtually won the first round victory for the NDC and President John Mahama is that 9.4% began to doubt the promises of the New Patriotic Party,” Mr Ephson has explained Tuesday in his analysis of the polls. Results of the presidential opinion poll, which was released on Monday, projected 45.9 per cent votes for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo who has been tipped by other polls in the last few months, to win this year’s elections.

The analysis posited that about 67% believed that the NPP would be able to fulfil the ‘one district one factory’ promise but the additional ‘one-village, one-dam’ and the one million-dollar for every constituency “knocked hard at the belief that the NPP would fulfil all the promises”.

Sample size

Mr Ephson who is also the editor of the Dispatch Newspaper, said this year’s presidential opinion polls used the same methodology as those in the past 16 years.

However, he said the sample size of this year’s polls was reduced from 70 out of the 275 constituencies that cannot be considered as the stronghold of any political party to 40 constituencies.

“In this election year, we dropped 30 and concentrated on 40 constituencies we considered swing in Greater Accra, Central, Western and Brong Ahafo regions. We had a total of 4,000 respondents over the 40 constituencies in the six polls,” he said in the analysis.

He added: “An analysis of the six opinion polls [May-November] reveals that between May and July, the NDC had an increase of 7% and the NPP, an increase of 6%. The NDC had an increase of 3% between August ending and September 16, the NPP having an increase of 2%.”