Okay, the deed has been done - the Vice President and 2024 NPP flagbearer, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has settled on Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh (NAPO) as his presidential running mate.

Well, pollsters regularly say that the vice-presidential pick has almost no impact on a campaign.

But then the idea that a vice presidential candidate can increase turnout among a particular voting bloc isn't born out by the results in recent elections. It's been with us since the dawn of partisan politics.

Dr Bawumia’s decision was a complete no-brainer - It's trite that the choice of Napo is basically to help get out the Ashanti votes.

However, given what Bawumia is selling and Napo's political track record, how would this vice-presidential pick impact the Ashanti voters to vote for or against the NPP?

Starting with the 2000 elections, when John Kufuor ended the PNDC/NDC's 19-year reign at the Presidency, every NPP candidate for president has won between 74 and 76 percent of the Ashanti votes.

The broader question that remains to be answered is how good enough is the Bawumia/Napo ticket to secure at least the 71% of the Ashanti votes that President Akufo-Addo secured in the 2020 elections for the NPP.

Beyond that, let's look at the rough outline of this decision;

Napo is known for being both brutish and prone to making the kind of statements that get him in trouble. In 2021, in the wake of the Keta tidal wave disaster, and the call for the provision of funds for victims, he intimated that he doesn't understand why the opposition NDC would be advocating for the government to include their stronghold in the government's budget estimates, a remark that drew criticism for being tribally insensitive.

Again, while refuting the recent suggestion that Ghana has returned to the days of power crisis popularly known as dumsor, he asked Ghanaians “to do their own dumsor timetable if they wanted one.”

By almost every measure, the choice by Dr Bawumia in some ways mirrors his own political standing in the NPP.

Whichever way you look at it, the NPP now stands on the brink of a political precipice.

Meanwhile, Keir Stamer has just delivered the biggest Labour Party win since Tony Blair on a dramatic night in British politics - A thumping good majority and decisive mandate, I must say.

Dela Coffie is a communications consultant and political activist