Although the National Democratic Congress (NDC) decisively won the 2024 general elections, subjecting the ruling New Patriotic Party to a humiliating defeat, there were more victors and losers in this election.

While some ‘men of God’ put their supernatural powers on the line, making diverging prophecies on the outcome of the election, some pollsters also put their integrities and academic prowess' on the line, predicting different outcomes of the election from studies they undertook.

Well, a number of these pollsters have gone quiet since the outcome of the election after the real data proved otherwise.

This GhanaWeb article looks at Ghanaian pollsters who completely mis-predicted the outcome of the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections and those who were on point.

‘Mis-pollsters’:

Despite international organisations like Fitch Solutions and EIU predicting victory for John Dramani Mahama and his party, the NDC, some Ghanaian pollsters gathered data which showed otherwise, predicting victories for Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the presidential candidate of the NPP.

Here are the pollsters who predicted victory for Dr. Bawumia and the NPP and what they said:

Professor Smart Sarpong:



Professor Smart Sarpong, an associate professor of statistics at the Kumasi Technical University, predicted that Vice President Dr. Bawumia would win the 2024 presidential election.

In his latest survey for the election, he put Bawumia in the lead with 49.1% and Mahama coming second with 45.8% of the votes.

“All other candidates put together obtained 1.7% of the votes. It is clear from this report that elections in 2024 can be won in the first round by only one of the two leading political parties, with the NPP having a higher chance of clinching a first-round victory,” excerpts of the study read.

Details of his survey also showed that the presidential candidate of the NPP would win 7 of the 16 regions in the country, while that of the NDC would win 9 regions.

“Ahafo, Ashanti, Bono, Central, Eastern, North East, and Western regions are the leading regions powering the NPP’s 49.1% lead. Bono East, Greater Accra, Northern, Oti, Savanna, Upper East, Upper West, Volta, and Western North regions are the leading regions powering the NDC’s 45.8%,” he added.

For the parliamentary election, the survey showed that the ruling NPP would be the Majority Caucus of the 9th parliament, winning at least 148 seats in the House, with 128 considered “safe”.

The NDC, on the other hand, was projected to win 92 safe seats, while 56 constituencies would remain highly competitive.

Ben Ephson:



Pollster and Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch Newspaper, Ben Ephson, also predicted victories for Dr. Bawumia and the New Patriotic Party.

He indicated that the vice president would conveniently win the 2024 presidential election with 51.2% of the total votes.

He indicated that John Dramani Mahama would come second in the election with 47.1% of the total votes, adding that the other presidential candidates would together poll 1.7% of the votes.

Well, the predictions of Prof Sarpong and Ben Ephson were way off from the actual outcome of the election.

Mahama decisively won the presidential election with almost 57% of the total votes cast, with Bawumia coming second with over 41% of the votes.

The outcome of the parliamentary election is even more devastating, with the NDC getting more than 180 seats in the 9th Parliament and the NPP getting less than 90 seats.

The less than 90 seats of the NPP is way less than the at least 148 seats predicted by Prof Sarpong.

The pollster:


Mussa Dankwah

One Ghanaian pollster who has consistently predicted victory for President-Elect John Mahama and the NDC is Mussa Dankwah, the Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics.

Mussa Dankwah even put his head on the line, predicting that Mahama would convincingly win the election and the NDC would form the Majority Caucus of Parliament.

In late November, he reaffirmed his confidence in his polls, stating: "On December 1, I will announce the winner of the election. If my predictions go wrong, they can take my head off. We are very confident. Nobody else has seen what we have seen in the data. I believe in data, and I will never go against it. On December 1, we will tell Ghanaians who is going to win and by what margin," while speaking with Adakabre Frimpong Manso on Neat FM.

He added, "Let’s look at the NPP primary. If we had gotten that one wrong, they would have finished us by now."

Some of his predictions include accurately stating that the constituency with the largest voter population, Dome Kwabenya, which has been dominated by the NPP over the years, would be lost to the NDC in the parliamentary election.

He accurately predicted that the NPP would garner 65% of the votes in the presidential election in the Ashanti Region, which happens to be the stronghold of the ruling party, where the party obtained over 75% of the votes in the 2020 elections.

BAI/AE

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