Two polls profile presidential candidates
By Gideon Sackitey

Accra, Dec. 8, Ghanadot.com - Ghana’s political arena has slowly been set agog ahead of the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections with the recent releases of two polls on who the front runners are for the forthcoming National Delegates Congress to elect the Presidential Candidates of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP).

The polls, which are usual at this time of the year prior to election, also comes only weeks before the National Delegates Congress of the main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) party when they also hope to elect their flag bearer for the 2008 elections.

Two polls have been released so far.  The first by Mr. Ben Ephson, Managing Editor of the Daily Dispatch and an Electoral Analyst and the other by Professor Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana.

In the first poll, Mr. Ephson predicted that, only four presidential hopefuls of the NPP have come up as most favourable and serious contenders in the crowded race to be the next flagbearer for the New Patriotic Party.

This is because there are currently as much as 16 persons who have either declared their intentions or have been seen to be scheming to lead the NPP party into the 2008 polls.

Mr. Ephson's poll, which featured 9 of the hopefuls, put Alan Kyerematen ahead, with 37 of the 174 constituency executives of the ruling party surveyed, opting for him. He was closely followed by the Vice President, who got 35, and Nana Akufo-Addo, who received 34. Mr Owusu-Agyemang came fourth with 23 votes.

The poll showed that Vice-President Aliu Mahama, Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and Alan Kyerematen, all cabinet Ministers in the current government of President John Kufuor, shared 74 percent of the results of opinion polls.

"It is more likely to influence the delegates,” Mr. Ephson said,  referring to the results of the polls, and predicting that the number of NPP leadership candidates will balloon to 21 before being narrowed to eight or less before the primaries.

He explained that "this poll will inform delegates as to who are the serious contenders," but noted that several strong contenders have yet to officially declare candidacy.

In the second and the latest poll, conducted by Professor Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana and leaked to the media, Nana Addo Dankwa, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Cooperation and NAPAD emerged as the favourite with 22.5 per cent of the votes, even though he scored a third position in the Ephson’s survey.

Vice-President Aliu Mahama again came second in the Legon survey with 20.4 percent of the vote. He was also second in Ephson’s survey, with an almost identical 20.1 percent showing. In third place was the Defence Minister Dr Addo Kufuor who is also the brother of current President.

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, Dr. Addo Kufuor, and Minister for Trade, Industry and PSI, Alan Kyerematen.

Lower on Prof Ansu-Kyeremeh's 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 of the poll – a charge which can best be answered once the pollsters come out with full details of their methodology and other related details such as the number of delegates they interviewed.

In the NDC poll, according to the Statesman which broke the story about 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. Defeated twice at the national polls, in 2000 and again in 2004, Prof. Mills remains one of the most popular figures within his party.

Trailing the front runner at a far distance are John Mahama with 13 percent, (who is yet to declare his intention to contest ) and  the Commonwealth Communication Chief Executive Officer Ekwow Spio-Garbrah with 9.8 percent.  Alhaji Iddrissu Mahama gained  7 percent, and business magnate Eddie Annan came in with 2.6 percent. at the poll.

When asked why popular party members like Dan Botwe, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, Kofi Konadu Apraku and Papa Owusu-Ankomah of the NPP did not fare better in his poll, Mr Ephson explained that 'delegates’ were hesitant to choose candidates who had not openly declared their candidacies.

But the results of the poll, which placed recently declared candidates ahead of more obvious frontrunners, surprised the pollsters themselves.

As regards who could win for the NDC, the result from questions 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; or, whether or not the results are indeed accurate anyway, remains to be seen.

The poll among the NPP rank is the culmination of a four-month polling of 174 delegates, out of more than 2,300 who will vote in the 2007 NPP leadership primary.

Some supporters of candidates in both the NPP and the NDC parties were not pleased with the results.  They claimed that their own findings have been more favourable to their preferred candidates.

It is expected that with time, the total number of contestants would reduce and the stage would get much clearer, especially before the NPP delegates conference itself. For now, as someone said, “they just want to enhance their bio-data”.

Ghanadot.com