Results of the second wave of the Ghana Election Poll which ran online from July 1 to August 1, 2020, via the renowned market research firm MSI-ACI, has found the majority of respondents in favour of allowing Ghanaians abroad to be allowed to register and vote in the 2020 general elections.
Out of the weighted sample of 2,055, more than half (55%) of the respondents wanted Ghanaians in the diaspora to vote despite the Electoral Commission’s reservations over challenges caused by the global coronavirus pandemic. Nearly a third of Ghanaian adult voters (29%) did not agree that Ghanaians living abroad should be allowed to vote in the elections, while the rest (16%) were not sure.
In terms of gender, 54% of males responded in the affirmative, while 30% said No, with the rest unsure if Ghanaians in the diaspora should be allowed to vote in December 2020. For females, 55% said Yes, while 28% said No, with the rest unsure.
Support for the registration of Ghanaians living abroad reduced with age as a lot more young people think that Ghanaians living abroad should be allowed to register to vote. Ghanaians who had no party affiliation were as unsure as those who opposed the idea of allowing Ghanaians living abroad to register to vote in the upcoming elections. For those who supported the idea of allowing Ghanaians living abroad to register and vote, half of them had no party affiliation.
Across the regions of Ghana, it is generally believed that Ghanaians living abroad should be allowed to register to vote in the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections. More than half of respondents across Western, Greater Accra, Ashanti and Central regions are of the opinion that Ghanaians living abroad should be allowed to vote.
The second wave of the scientific poll had a three-fold increase in participants as compared to the first wave which recorded 792 responses. Over 90 percent of the respondents were living in Ghana and the rest were living in countries including South Africa, Ethiopia, Botswana and Egypt.
Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error (with finite population correction) of plus or minus 2.162%. A representative sample of the Ghanaian population of 28,956,587 - population projection as stated on page 6 of the Ghana Living Standards Survey (GLSS 7) - was achieved by weighting (matching) the data according to age and gender demographics of the 2010 population and housing census and the GLSS 7.
The Ghana Election Poll is powered by GhanaWeb and the Africa Consumer Panel which is a cooperation between the digital publisher Africa Business Communities and renowned market research firm MSI-ACI.
The online poll is conducted every month and the results are published at the beginning of every other month on GhanaWeb.com. It is devoid of spam as the respondents can take the survey only once. The MSI-ACI platform that hosts the survey records the device on which the respondent takes the poll and does not allow for a second attempt from the same device.
The Ghana Election Poll is different from the open-access poll which is running on GhanaWeb. The latter allows participants to self-select into participation and its results cannot be generalized because it is a representative of only the participants of the poll.
Click here to take part in the third wave of the Ghana Election Poll.
The Representation of the People Amendment Act (ROPAA) was passed 12 years ago