AS the NDC national delegates' congress lies just days away, and the NPP conference in 2007 looms ever closer on the horizon, the pace of campaigning and debate has picked up in recent weeks - fuelled not only by speculation, but also by an increasing number of apparent scientific attempts to 'predict" the results of the presidential flagbearer races.
Earlier this week, Frank Appeagyei, the campaign manager for Kwame Addo Kufuor, the Defence Minister currently gunning for the NPP’s flagbearer position, dismissed a Daily Dispatch opinion poll, which began publishing on Monday. Ben Ephson’s survey, which quizzed NPP delegates in 174 of the country’s 230 constituencies who they would vote for as presidential candidate, had placed Alan Kyerematen as the leading contender. With just 2.3 percent of the vote, the President’s brother, Dr Addo Kufuor, appeared to be out of the race – relegated to ninth place.
But, "he is in the front row; in fact he is the front runner,” Mr Appeagyei had told The Statesman Tuesday, questioning the reliability of the survey. Yesterday, Dr Addo Kufuor disappointed several journalists when he made a last-minute cancellation of a scheduled press conference, which was “to react to various opinion polls and other suggestions on his ratings in the NPP presidential race,” according to the press invitation. The press conference was called off, according to our sources, due to pressure and advice from others within the party who thought it would amount to an overreaction.
A new detailed opinion survey (about 50 pages in all), sections of which were broadcast on Hot FM yesterday morning and have been seen by The Statesman, was expected to form part of the Minister’s Press statement.
In the latest poll, conducted by Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, Dr Addo Kufuor is the third-ranking contestant amongst NPP members, with 16.7 percent of votes – seven times more votes than the earlier Dispatch survey.
Contacted yesterday by The Statesman Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh confirmed that the School of Communication Studies has indeed been working on an opinion poll, which relates to presidential candidates in both the NPP and the NDC. However, he said the document is not yet ready for publication, and denied releasing it to the press – agreeing to answer more questions about the survey only when the document is completed in coming weeks.
Its sudden slippage into the public domain, and the apparent intention of Dr Addo Kufuor to use the material as part of his press conference material, may have been forced by the huge interest that met the Ephson survey. In the Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh survey, respondents were asked the question, “If you were to vote for an NPP presidential candidate for 2008, who would you vote for?”
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and NEPAD, emerged as the favourite candidate – as he took 22.5 percent of the votes. The Minister had come third in Ephson’s survey, with three less votes than Ephson’s winner, Alan Kyerematen.
Second in the Legon survey is Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama with 20.4 percent of the vote. He was also second in Ephson’s survey, with an almost identical 20.1 percent.
In third place is the Defence Minister.
Though the placing of the Vice President and the Foreign Minister appears consistent in the two surveys, discrepancy is very much apparent in the ratings of the Defence Minister and Minister for Trade, Industry and PSI. Next on the Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh poll are Yaw Osafo Maafo (4th place and 6.9 percent of votes, compared to 8th place and 5.1 percent of votes in the Ephson survey) and Alan Kyerematen (down from 1st place to 5th, with 5.1 percent of votes instead of 21.2 percent in the Ephson survey).
The disparity between the two sets of results may fuel the mounting speculation about the integrity – a charge which may best be answered once the pollsters come out with full details of their methodology and other related details. Respondents were also asked, “which of them [the candidates] can win for the NPP party?” Logically, there was a close correlation between the answers to the first and second questions, as party members appeared to base their decisions for the flagbearer largely on the contestant with the biggest pulling-power as a potential president. Akufo-Addo again topped the poll with 21.4 percent of votes, followed (again) by Mahama then Addo Kufuor.
In Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh’s poll, between NPP candidates, the contest appears to be close – with mere percentage points between one candidate and the next; and the shifting of places between the two surveys. Support trends within the NDC seem more marked, however: in the Legon survey, almost half of all respondents, 49.7 percent, said they would vote for former Vice President John Evans Atta Mills as the party’s presidential candidate. Already thrice-defeated at the national polls, twice in 2000 and again in 2004, Mills remains one of the most popular figures within his party, the apparent fall from favour with the party’s founding chairman, Jerry John Rawlings, seemingly doing little to taint his own personal following.
Trailing the front runner at a safe distance is John Mahama with 13 percent, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah with 9.8 percent, Alhaji Iddrissu Mahama with 7 percent, and Eddie Annan with 2.6 percent.
As regards who could win for the NDC, the results again follow the ranking of preferred presidential candidates.
A smaller proportion – 17.9 percent compared to the NPP’s 19.5 percent – declined to pick any presidential candidate at all. Whether or not this figure will reflect in the party’s delegates’ conference, now just 11 days away, whether or not the results are indeed accurate anyway, remains to be seen. However, information reaching The Statesman is that aspiring presidential candidates themselves are undertaking their own surveys, in a bid to ‘prove’ their support and popularity – and solicit for more.
