Executive Director and Head of Polling at Global Info Analytics, Dr. Musah Dankwah says any breakaway from the New Patriotic Party (NPP) could cost it dearly in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.
He was referring to rumours about the possible breakaway of Alan Kwadwo Kyerematen to run for president as an independent candidate.
According to Dr. Dankwah, in the event of Alan breaking away, his support base from within the NPP will continue to support his candidature, thus crippling the presidential candidate of the party.
“It’s a very tricky one. Certainly if he breaks from NPP and he goes independent he’s likely going to pull support from the NPP base for sure. And then he’s likely going to pull some numbers from the NDC as well. And then he will pull some numbers from floating voters,” he said.
However, Dr. Dankwah said he is yet to conduct an actual study on Alan Kyerematen to prove his point.
Nonetheless, a study of that nature conducted using Ken Agyapong as an independent candidate provided very similar results.
“We have not run him as an independent candidate in any scenario we’ve done before, but we have done that for Kennedy Agyapong. In one of the election polling we did in Tema West, to give us a fair idea, if you have a very strong independent candidate running in 2024.
“From that scenario what we saw was that Kennedy Agyapong brings NPP down to 29% in that small sample in Tema West. And then Kennedy goes 19%. But Mahama still was at 52% thereabout,” he said.
He concluded that should the party allow for any fragmentation, their chances of winning the 2024 presidential elections will shrink.
“So you could see that if there is a fragmentation in the NPP’s front they are the ones that are likely to suffer and not the NDC. NDC appears to be solid behind their candidate. And for any third force to make impact they need a breakaway from NPP as well to make an impact and at the moment we are not seeing that,” he said.
