The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has reiterating that, apart from snatching 36 seats from the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), its Presidential candidate, John Dramani Mahama has out-performed most of their parliamentary candidates in the December 7 General elections.
At the last in the series of Press conferences addressed by the Director of elections for the party, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah projected a “one-touch” victory for its presidential candidate, John Dramni Mahama.
The NDC’s Director of Elections, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah this morning re-emphasised that the certified results it has collated so far show that the NDC has “flipped” 36 parliamentary seats from the NPP, as well as securing a total of 143 majority in parliament out of the 275 seats available
According to Mr. Afriyie-Ankrah, their preliminary results show that the performance of the party’s presidential candidate is in sync with that of the parliamentary results that have been collated so far and that in the political history of Ghana, parties that have won a majority in Parliament have always gone ahead to win the presidency.
Meanwhile, the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) held a dawn press conference, claiming its independent collations show that its presidential candidate, Nana Akufo Addo had won by 52.87%, while the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress’ (NDC) John Dramani Mahama is trailing with 49.3% of the national votes.
The NPP goes ahead to aggregate their supposed votes claiming it had counted 6,085,708 and a little over 5 million for the NDC’s presidential candidate.
However, a close scrutiny of these figures reveals subtle misinformation because, with a total registered voter population of 17,007,726, the NPP numbers could only be aggregated to approximately 36% and not 53% as the party’s General Secretary, John Boadu claimed at the 2 am press conference held today.
“We are happy to announce that from the results we have so far collated and vetted in our situation room in Accra from the scanned pink sheets we received from 34,000 polling stations nationwide, President Akufo-Addo is in an incontestable win. This represents 87.43% of all polling stations…This puts the NPP candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in the lead with 6,085,708 representing 52.87%. John Maham is number two with over 5 million votes representing 49.3%,” John Boadu stated.
This means that assuming the elections recorded a 100% turnout rate, 6 million votes out of 17 million voters will still not sum up to 53% for the NPP.
The NDC disagrees with the NPP’s analysis and has referred to key parliamentary seats that the governing party had lost. “It is important to note most of the heavyweights of the NPP falling, so it is very clear that defeat is staring them in the face!” Elvis Afriyie Ankrah stated in an earlier dawn press conference.
Some of the important parliamentary seats lost by the NPP through the NDC’s keyword “flipping” includes the Ledzokuku constituency in the Greater Accra Region held by Bernard Okoe-Boye; the Lawra Constituency of Anthony Abayifa Karbo, Awutu Senya West of George Andah; Tema East of Titus Glover, and the duo of Madina and Adenta held by NPP’s Boniface Siddique and Yaw Boabeng Asamoah respectively.
Other dynamics playing out shows that with over 80% of the results from the main political stronghold of the governing NPP in the Ashanti Region coming in, the NDC’s John Dramani Mahama has chalked over 30% of the votes in an unprecedented turn.
Statistics show that anytime the NDC polls over 25% of total votes in the NPP’s stronghold in the Ashanti Region, the NDC goes on to win the popular votes Presidential elections.
Mr. Afriyie Ankrah also noted that with more than 82% of total tallied votes from the Greater Accra Region, a key swing region, the NDC’s John Dramani Mahama has recorded over 56% of popular votes.