Ben Ephson explains failed prediction for 2024 elections

Ghanaian pollster Ben Ephson, Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch newspaper, has offered insights into why his prediction for the 2024 general elections missed the mark.

Speaking on Joy News on December 12, 2024, he attributed the misstep to voter apathy within the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

According to him, the low turnout among NPP supporters proved difficult to detect during pre-election polling.

“Over the past 23 years, I’ve done 8 polls; I’ve missed 2. Now, on both occasions, like this one, for example, it is difficult to know apathy. If you look at 2020 and 2024, the numbers that the NDC got were about the same. NPP’s numbers dropped by about 30%.

“Using the Ashanti Region, which is considered the NPP stronghold, he highlighted that “the votes that the NPP got in 2020 dropped by over 1.2 million in 2024 in Ashanti alone. So that is the problem with polling. It’s difficult to indicate apathy. It was the same thing in 2016.”

“When she [Hillary Clinton] was campaigning with Obama for a Democrat slot, she took potshots at the Blacks. So when she became a Democrat candidate, they refused to turn out. So that’s one of the problems with polling. You cannot indicate apathy that people will not turn out,” myjoyonline.com quoted him to have said during the interview.

Ephson emphasized that voter apathy remains one of the greatest challenges in polling accuracy.

He had projected a win for the NDC in 2016, which failed.

He also predicted a win in favour of the New Patriotic Party prior to the 2024 elections, which also failed.

AM/OGB

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