Over two hundred thousand national delegates of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) will on Saturday, November 4 elect a flagbearer to lead the party into the 2024 general elections.
The elections to be conducted in all 275 Constituencies across the country will see some 203, 439 delegates taking that crucial decision for the party.
According to political watchers, the stakes are high in the 2024 polls especially when there is no incumbent flagbearer seeking re-election, the reason political parties must put their best candidates forward.
In the Ahafo region, some 4, 204 delegates are expected to cast their ballot and 34,987 in the Ashanti Region in the much talked about National Delegates Conference.
6,661; 7,571; 18, 127, and 21, 233 delegates will vote in the Bono, Bono East, Central, and Eastern Regions respectively.
For Greater Accra, Oti, Northern, North East, Savannah, Upper East, and Upper West some 39,134; 3,490, 11, 803; 5,210; 3,964; 8,118 and 6,640 delegates will vote.
The others are Volta, 11,995; Western, 13,717; Western North 6, 122 and the Party headquarters in Accra, 463 delegates.
The party will elect from four presidential hopefuls-Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia; businessman and maverick politician, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Francis Addai-Nimoh, and former Agric Minister, Dr. Afriyie Akoto.
Already polls conducted by research organizations put Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia in the lead even before the first vote is cast.
The latest poll by a UK-based research organization, Centre for Sustainable African Development Initiatives (C-SADI), has predicted more than 80% win for Vice President Dr. Bawumia.
The research, jointly conducted with a Ghanaian-based organization, The Outcomes International, indicated that Dr. Bawumia will sweep the presidential primaries of NPP by 80.8% on Saturday.
His main competitor, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, is expected to secure a partly 10.4% of the votes, while Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto will get 1.1% and Francis Addai-Nimoh will bag 0.4% of the votes.
The report, which used quantitative research design and computerized assessed telephone interviewing (CAT) technology, focused on assessing the candidates based on their vision and competence, with delegates being prioritized based on these key criteria.
The minimum sample size was determined 9.248 PSE 95 percent confidence level and 1 percent margin of error.
However, 9,300 delegates were interviewed to increase precision. The research used multistage probability proportional to size sampling (PPS) with implicit stratification.
Field work for the study was between October 10 to 20, 2023.
According to the research report, 7.3% of the delegates remain undecided, and the main reasons for the choice of Dr. Bawumia are his vision for the party and the way he has carried out himself throughout the campaign.
The delegates, the poll said, also believe in his competence to carry out his vision and mandate with confidence in his ability to win the 2024 general election for the NPP.
“The main bases for assessing candidates by delegates are the vision of the candidate for the party, the vision of the candidate for the country, and the competence of the candidate,” the report indicated.
It said delegates of the party also believe the NPP stands a good chance of breaking the eight-year political power alternation.
C-SADI research noted that the conviction of the delegates is based on the condition that the performance of the government is improved and the party stays united after the primaries.
Following the predictions of these two renowned research organizations, Dr. Bawumia won the party’s super delegates’ election by a landslide.
Some have speculated that Kennedy Agyapong may give Dr. Bawumia a run for his money, but according to the results of this new study, he may not live up to the billing.
By Kofi Yirenkyi
