Ghana Election 2024: Will NPP break The 8?

December 7 is only a week away. Of the choices facing Ghanaians, one is whether to continue our eight-year rotation cycle of the duopoly by voting for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) or breaking the cycle by voting to keep the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in office. 

The NPP coined the phrase “Break the 8” when the 2024 election season got underway. This is the second time the party stands at this critical juncture of hoping to avoid party turnover in Ghana’s election cycle. The difference is the intentionality of the phrase as part of 2024 was clearly missing in 2008. 

Can the party “break the 8” or are we facing the prospect of another turn over election? 

I reflect on this question by looking back at how Ghanaians felt in 2008 at the end of NPP I, 2016 at the end of NDC II in comparison to how they are feeling today (NPP II). 

Incumbent vulnerability

I do so to assess incumbent vulnerability as the NPP attempts to hold on to power. Data for the analysis is drawn from the Afrobarometer survey (2008 and 2024) and CDD-Ghana’s pre-election survey (July 2016). 

There was no Afrobarometer survey in 2016 but the CDD-Ghana pre-election survey on the indicators selected is structured similarly. I would like to point out that the 2024 Afrobarometer data on the job approval rating of the president is not yet publicly available.

The number cited is from Afrobarometer Round 9 (2022). 

Dispositions

Clearly, 2008 is starkly different from both 2016 and especially 2024 with more positive dispositions about the incumbent under NPP I than under NPP II or NDC II.

I have no doubt that, an NPP presidential candidate, seeking to “break the 8” will prefer the 2008 political terrain. In addition, if there was ever a time to “break the 8”, the year 2008 presented the brightest chance for the party, in my opinion.

This is because 2008 represents the most positive Ghanaians have ever expressed on all matters of democracy and good governance in the history of Ghana’s participation in the Afrobarometer survey.

In my book Notes from The Public Square: What Ghanaians Said and How They Felt During Kufuor’s Presidency in 2022, the question I kept asking myself was “why was the NPP unable to capitalize on the generally positive dispositions Ghanaians held about the Kufuor years to break the 8?” So, will the NPP be able to “break the 8”?

Closest elections

What does the table above then tell us? First, no two elections are the same. The dynamics of 2008 trampled whatever positive dispositions Ghanaians felt about the Kufuor administration resulting in both a parliamentary loss (first round) and presidential loss (second round) for the NPP.

That election is the closest we have seen in the history of the 4th Republic. On the contrary, the negative dispositions Ghanaians felt about the John Mahama administration resulted in a first-round loss in both the presidential and parliamentary elections for the NDC.

Second, if both positive and negative dispositions can produce the same effect for an incumbent, losing election (2008 and 2016), then it raises the question of whether presidential candidates of incumbent parties pay the price for perceived poor performance but benefit from perceived good performance.

My initial hypothesis suggests it depends on whether the incumbent, whose performance is under scrutiny, appears on the ballot. 

In 2008, former President Kufuor was not on the ballot and based on whatever factors Ghanaians weighed, the NPP candidate was not made to benefit from his perceived good performance.

In 2016 however, the incumbent was on the ballot and therefore made to pay the price for perceived poor performance. 

My mother, a die-hard NPP partisan, will love for me to answer this question in the affirmative. But I cannot. Conventional wisdom says against the backdrop of all the economic pinch points and governance challenges, 2024 should be a turnover election.

Unconventional wisdom says wait for December 7th. 

The writer is the Project Director, Democracy Project