The Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics, Mussa Dankwah, has attributed the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) defeat in the 2024 elections to its failure to align its campaign with voters’ priorities.
According to Mr. Dankwah, the NPP focused its campaign on education, particularly highlighting the success of its flagship programme, the Free Senior High School (SHS).
Throughout the campaign, NPP executives emphasised the importance of the Free SHS programme, with some even suggesting that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) would cancel it if they won.
However, speaking on Morning Starr with Naa Dedei Tettey, Mr. Dankwah argued that education was not the top concern for many Ghanaians during the election.
According to him, polls showed that individuals with senior high qualifications, who benefited from the free Senior High programme, did not support the NPP.
He said, “Long before the polls, polls had shown that people with senior high qualifications do not support the government. People with senior high qualifications who were within certain age bracket and that age brackets were those who enjoyed the free senior high, NPP was losing them. When you ask Ghanaian, ‘what are your top three issues’? Education wasn’t first. It was the economy, jobs and education, and on all these top issues, Bawumia never led in any of them. “
“So even on their flagship programme that about 80% of the campaign was spent on, he didn’t win among those people. I think that’s one thing that they should learn as a political party. You must always align your priorities in the campaign to voters’ priorities. You can’t misalign their will. People were saying economy, jobs, so you must align that.”
He advised political parties to align their campaign priorities with those of the voters, rather than imposing their own agenda.
