Politics of Wednesday, 1 December 2004

Source: THE STATESMAN

Kufuor Widens Lead On Mills - Statesman

NATIONWIDE POLL SHOWS JAK?s APPROVAL RATE AT 69%

There is a growing buzz that next Tuesday?s presidential election will be snapped by the incumbent in one-touch.

Results of a nationwide survey of 5000 eligible voters undertaken about a month ago indicated that 56 per cent would vote for President Kufuor, with Prof. Atta Mills lagging far behind with 24.9%.

The survey undertaken by the Primary Research Associates (PRA) also confirmed the ?skirt and blouse? fear that the President could be a lot more popular than his party.

With a margin of error of 4%, almost seven out of ten of those questioned 69.4% said President Kufuor was either doing his work ?very well? or 46% said ?well?. A little over 22.6% said he was performing ?poorly? and 6.6% said ?very poorly?.

PRA the research team, made up of a consortium of professors of the University of Ghana had undertaken an earlier opinion poll in March.

The poll generally points to an increase in the support for the ruling party since the earlier poll.

Most remarkably, the percentage of respondents who would have voted for Kufuor was up from 49.9% in March to 56.0% in this survey. Also, the number of undecided voters has shrunk from 18.6% to 2.2%.

But the researchers point out that the NDC was hardly in a serious campaign mood at the time of the survey, which was between September 27 and October 20.