The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has a better chance of winning the December polls, a research from the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana has indicated.
A team of researchers from the department led by senior lecturer, Isaac Owusu-Mensah disclosed that the opposition party would record 49.9%.
The ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), the team said, also has an approval rate of 39.9%.
The Progressive People’s Party (PPP), the research continued would also record 5% whiles the Convention People’s Party (CPP) recording 1.7%; the National Democratic Party (NDP) recording 1.7% and Dr Edward Mahama of the PNC recorded 0.2% respectively. He also indicated there was a margin of error of between 2 to 3%.
Three percent of the respondents to the quantitative and qualitative survey, the researchers said were not ready to vote for an independent candidate whiles 0.9% of the respondents failed to give an answer.
The research was conducted in constituencies in seven out of the ten regions of the country. The Eastern, Ashanti and the Volta Regions were the regions left out by the researchers.
Issues that the respondents said would affect the direction of their votes, the research team said includes job creation, education and healthcare.
On education, the respondents explained that they were concerned about their inability to pay their wards school fees which results largely from the bad management of the economy. The ‘collapsed’ National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) were also the main issues talked about on Healthcare.
In the Brong Ahafo region, the microfinance scam popularly referred to as the DKM would also dictate the direction of the vote of the electorates.
According to the lead researcher, Dr. Isaac Owusu-Mensah, the respondents believes that the failure of the Bank of Ghana to regulate the microfinance companies makes the government guilty.
“And I want to state the NDC has more work to do to win the elections especially as the party won with not more than 300,000 votes, the NPP has an upper hand…,” Dr Owusu-Mensah said.
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