A political survey by the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana has revealed that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will again beat the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) with a huge margin if elections were to be held today.
A similar survey by the same unit before the 2016 general election predicted that the then opposition NPP was going to defeat the governing NDC in the general election with a wide margin.
The survey was carried out in 50 randomly selected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies across the country, with 5,000 respondents also randomly selected to respond to a number of questions on government’s economic policies, current state of governance, fight against corruption, social infrastructure and capacity to deliver on campaign promises by the NPP administration after two years in office.
A total of 2,433 respondents, representing 48.9%, said they would vote for the NPP while 1,600 respondents said they would vote for the NDC, representing 32.2% if elections were to be held today.
2,481 respondents, representing 49.6%, said they would vote for President Akufo-Addo while 1,667 respondents, representing 33.3%, said they would vote for former President John Mahama.
Majority of the respondents scored government high due its implementation of the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy.
They, however, urged the government to address the infrastructural challenges, with 45.5% asking the government to scrap the double-track system while 33.3% of the respondents said they were in support of the double-track system.
Majority of the respondents were also convinced that the NPP government, led by President Akufo-Addo, had demonstrated the capacity to deliver on its campaign promises.
The economy was a thorny issue, with 46.5% of the respondents saying that government’s economic policies have not led to any improvement in their lives.
42.6% of the respondents said that the government’s economic policies have impacted their lives positively.
According to the survey report, despite voters’ belief in accessibility to good education, the general economy may remain the single most important consideration in voters’ quest to choose a president and party to govern them in the future.
“Fight against corruption, unemployment, One District, One Factory and road construction are unfulfilled expectations of voters,” it added.
According to the survey, despite many employment-related programmes initiated by the current government, opinions were still divided on whether the employment situation was improving.
Only 5% of the respondents said new employment opportunities were emerging, 43.8% said opportunities were improving and 21.8% said things were getting worse.
The survey report called on the major political parties, which were affected by the survey, not to underestimate the accuracy of the report and take voters for granted.
It stressed that 90% of the 5,000 respondents voted in the 2016 general election.
“Our recent past history shows that a ruling party, which has ignored such concerns had done so at their own peril, two years to the 2020 general election are long enough, and at the same time very short in politics too.”
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