The 2024 election is a settled matter.The New Patriotic Party (NPP) lost to the National Democratic Congress (NDC), ending the party’s eight years in power and returning John Mahama to the presidency.
GhaianaMentalityIt also ended the NPP’s attempt to do the impossible in the Fourth Republic – breaking the eight-year party turnover cycle.
There has been no shortage of postmortems with partisans, political analysts and ordinary citizens all offering their views of what went wrong.
There is, however, one dimension of the NPP's defeat that continues to hold my attention: the intriguing, almost paradoxical way in which Ghanaians felt about the government and the party as election day approached.
It was very evident that Ghanaians were unhappy. Conversations in public spaces showed that. Data from trusted sources like the Afrobarometer survey confirmed it. Nonetheless, there is still something intriguing about Ghanaian sentiments in 2024 and that is what this piece sets out to reflect on.
This contrasts with Round 9 (2022), which captures the depth of disapproval midway during its second term in office, and Round 10 (2024), which reveals the failure to recover from disapproval but not complete abandonment.
Disapproval
The extent of Ghanaian disapproval of the NPP is difficult to fully document in a single opinion piece.
The illustrations that follow are, therefore, selective to help paint the picture of a public that had lost faith in the incumbent government.
The first illustration is the public’s assessment of the president. His performance approval rating dropped from 76 per cent (2017) to 29 per cent (2022) to 31 per cent (2024).
Coupled with the change in performance approval rating was the decline in trust levels.
The percentage of Ghanaians saying they trusted the president “a lot” changed as follows: 47 per cent (2017), 32 per cent (2022) and 28 per cent (2024
The second illustration is the public's assessment of government performance.
Across every problem domain, there was a significant decline in approval of how the NPP government was handling each of them. Between 2017 and 2022, performance approval dropped as follows: managing the economy (-47pts), addressing education needs (-29pts), creating jobs (-28pts) and improving basic health services (-19pts).
The third illustration is how Ghanaians, overall, felt about democracy. In 2017, eight out of 10 Ghanaians (78 per cent) expressed satisfaction with the way democracy was working in the country. By 2022, that dropped to five out of 10 Ghanaians (51 per cent) and remained so (50 per cent) in 2024.
In summary, Ghanaians pulled away from the president, his government and were dissatisfied with the way democracy was working in Ghana.
Source:graphic.comDisapproval without Abandonment
There is an easy and straightforward counterargument to my assertion that there was disapproval without abandonment.
After all, what greater sign of abandonment is there than losing an election? I do not dismiss that argument.
On December 7, 2024, at the ballot box, Ghanaian voters indeed did walk away from the NPP by voting them out of power.
However, I assert that abandonment is not only an electoral event but also the disposition of voters, even as they vote you out of office.
The NPP rolled out several policy initiatives during their time in office.
In Afrobarometer Round 10 (2024), Ghanaians were asked: “Please tell me whether you agree or disagree with the following statements: Regardless of which party wins the 2024 national elections, the next government should continue to implement the following initiatives.”
They answered (percentage who agreed/strongly agreed) as follows: 86 per cent (Free SHS); 83 per cent (Planting/rearing for food and jobs); 74 per cent (One District, One Factory); and 64 per cent (One village, One dam).
And yet here is where the paradox asserts itself most forcefully.
source:fiifi-degreat.blogspot.com
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