Why Must the Losers of Primary Contests Become Political Losers?

Can Ghana’s Political Parties Turn Internal Elections into a Search for Leadership Teams

There is something about political primaries that has always troubled me. We call them contests, elections and democratic exercises --- and rightly so. But what happens to those who lose? One candidate wins and suddenly becomes “the candidate.” The others, some of whom may have commanded thousands of votes, are instantly labelled “the losers.” But are they really losers?

A candidate who garners tens of thousands of votes in a national presidential primary has demonstrated an ability to organize, persuade, mobilize and command the confidence of a substantial segment of the party. Why should that political capital suddenly disappear because someone else received more votes?

Perhaps Ghana's political parties need to rethink how they approach internal elections. A presidential primary should not merely isolate a single winner. It should identify a party's strongest political talent and provide a mechanism for retaining that talent. Let the winner take the mandate. But do not throw away the talent.

Retaining Talent: Moving Beyond “Winner-Takes-All”

I am not suggesting that elections should cease to have winners. If Alhaji Abdulai receives the highest number of votes, Alhaji Abdulai must win the presidential nomination. Democracy requires that the result be respected. But what happens to Dr. Braimah, Sheikh Dokurugu and Hajjia Dimalo?

Under conventional arrangements, the answer is simple: they lost, so they step aside. I believe we should ask a different question: What can the party do with the political talent and grassroots support demonstrated by the other candidates?

Suppose five serious candidates contest a presidential primary. Alhaji Abdulai, the winner, takes the mandate and leads the presidential campaign. Dr. Braimah, the second-place finisher, could be considered for the vice-presidential running mate position, subject to the Constitution and the party's own procedures. Sheikh Dokurugu could be considered for parliamentary leadership, policy coordination or another senior national responsibility. Hajjia Dimalo could assume an important role in national party organization, reconciliation or policy development. Chief Salnolji could be assigned a meaningful responsibility commensurate with his or her experience and expertise. This should not be an automatic entitlement. Nor should it be a rigid formula. The principle is simpler: Let the winner take the mandate. Let the party retain the talent.

This Is Not an NPP or NDC Proposal

I initially began reflecting on this issue while observing internal developments within the New Patriotic Party (NPP). But it would be a mistake to regard the proposal as an NPP-only matter. It applies equally to the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and, indeed, to every political party in Ghana. If a reform strengthens Ghanaian democracy, it should not be designed to benefit one political organization.

The NPP and NDC are Ghana's two dominant political parties. Their internal governance therefore has consequences far beyond the parties themselves. The real question is: Can Ghanaian political parties move away from a winner-takes-all mentality in their internal elections? That question deserves serious discussion.

The Numbers Tell a Story
Recent primary figures make the argument particularly interesting. In the NPP presidential primary of January 2026, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia won decisively with 110,643 votes, representing 56.48 percent of valid votes. Kennedy Ohene Agyapong placed second with 46,554 votes, Bryan Acheampong third with 36,303, Yaw Osei Adutwum fourth with 1,999, and Kwabena Agyei Agyepong fifth with 402 votes, out of 195,901 valid votes cast.

There is no question about who won. Dr Bawumia won the nomination. But look at the political significance of the other numbers. The second-place candidate received more than 46,000 votes. The third-place candidate received more than 36,000. Together, the second- and third-place candidates commanded more than 82,000 votes. Those are not insignificant numbers. They represent tens of thousands of delegates and party supporters who actively identified with particular candidates, their ideas, their leadership classs and their political networks. Should the party simply tell them: “Your candidate lost. Now fall in line”? Or should it tell them: “Your candidate did not win the flagbearership, but the candidate, the ideas and the supporters remain valuable parts of our political movement”?

I believe the second approach deserves serious consideration. It turns competition into an investment in the party rather than a battle in which most of the investment is discarded immediately after the votes are counted.

The Constitution Places Important Limits

There is, however, an important constitutional issue here. My original thinking was more mechanical: that the first four candidates could become, in order, President, Vice-President, Speaker of Parliament and Party Chairman. On closer examination, the principle is stronger than the formula.

The 1992 Constitution does not permit political parties simply to convert primary rankings into state offices. Article 60 provides that a candidate for Vice-President is designated by the candidate for President before the presidential election. Article 63 also requires a presidential nomination to designate a person to serve as Vice-President. The constitutional structure therefore connects the Vice-President to the presidential ticket; a party cannot simply decree that the second-place finisher in a primary automatically becomes Vice-President.

Article 95 is equally clear regarding the Speaker of Parliament. The Speaker is elected by Members of Parliament from among persons who are Members of Parliament or who are otherwise qualified to be elected as Members of Parliament. The office cannot constitutionally be awarded merely because someone finished third in a party presidential primary.

This distinction is critical. A party can create mechanisms for retaining political talent. It cannot bypass the Constitution in doing so. Thus, the third-place presidential-primary candidate might be given priority for parliamentary leadership, campaign strategy or another party responsibility, but becoming Speaker would still depend on the constitutional process. The proposal is therefore not about replacing constitutional government with party arithmetic. It is about using party rules intelligently within constitutional boundaries.

The American Experience: A Warning, Not a Model

There is an intriguing historical example from the United States that initially appears relevant to this discussion, but on closer examination, it provides both a lesson and a warning. The original U.S. Constitution did not establish the modern system in which presidential and vice-presidential candidates run together on a ticket. Under Article II, Section 1, presidential electors originally cast two votes for different candidates. The candidate receiving the highest number became President, while the candidate receiving the second-highest number became Vice-President.

Why did the framers create such a system? The United States was a new republic, and the framers were trying to devise a method of choosing an executive without simply handing the choice to Congress. At the time, organized political parties had not yet developed in the form they later assumed. The system worked in the first two presidential elections, when George Washington was the overwhelming electoral choice.

But the emergence of political parties exposed a serious weakness. In 1796, John Adams, the Federalist candidate, won the presidency. Thomas Jefferson, his political opponent and the Democratic-Republican candidate, came second and therefore became Vice-President. The arrangement placed two political rivals at the top of the executive branch.

The problem became even more dramatic in 1800. Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both Democratic-Republicans, received exactly the same number of electoral votes. Because the system did not distinguish between votes for President and Vice-President, the election produced a constitutional crisis and had to be decided by the House of Representatives after 36 ballots. The experience led to constitutional reform.

The Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, required electors to vote separately for President and Vice-President. The old system that effectively made the runner-up Vice-President was therefore abandoned. There is consequently a danger in drawing the wrong lesson from American history.

Ghana should not look at this episode and conclude that the runner-up in a presidential contest should automatically become Vice-President. The American experience suggests precisely the opposite: political competition cannot always be translated mechanically into executive office. The American example is nevertheless relevant to the larger question being considered here. It shows that democratic systems have long struggled with how to manage competing political leaders after elections. The solution adopted by the United States was eventually to separate the presidential and vice-presidential choices constitutionally.

Ghana already has such a separation. Article 60 provides for the designation of a Vice-Presidential candidate by the presidential candidate. Article 95 separately establishes the constitutional process for electing the Speaker of Parliament. We therefore do not need to reproduce America's early experiment. Our challenge is different. Having selected one person to lead, how does a political party retain and deploy the political talent demonstrated by those who did not win? That is where Ghana can learn from the problem without copying the failed mechanism.

The American experience therefore belongs in this discussion not as a model to imitate, but as a historical warning: Do not confuse political inclusion with automatic office-sharing. A party can retain political talent without turning every primary ranking into a constitutional office.

The Hidden Cost of Winner-Takes-All Primaries

Presidential primary candidates invest heavily in their parties. They travel across the country. They meet delegates. They build constituency networks. They formulate policies. They raise money. They develop campaign organizations. They articulate alternative visions of the country. They demonstrate communication, organizational and coalition-building skills. Then the election ends. The winner moves forward. Much of the infrastructure built by the other candidates begins to disappear. That is a curious way to run a political organization.

A party spends enormous resources developing political talent and then behaves as though only one person possesses value.

There are at least four costs:

1. It can create superficial unity --- After a primary, we often hear that the party has “united.” But sometimes this may amount primarily to organizational unity rather than genuine reconciliation. The defeated candidate may publicly support the winner while thousands of supporters remain emotionally attached to the losing campaign.
2. It can encourage factionalism --- When candidates believe that everything depends upon winning, every primary becomes a struggle for survival. Losing does not simply mean losing an election. It can mean losing access, influence, visibility and political relevance. That can create incentives for destructive campaigning.
3. It can make future contests more bitter --- If a candidate believes that losing today means political extinction, the temptation is to fight harder, spend more and cultivate stronger factions.
4. It wastes political capital --- The people who supported the runner-up do not disappear. They remain party members, delegates, activists, donors, opinion leaders and voters. The party still needs them.

What Ghanaian Political Scholarship Can Teach Us

This is where Ghanaian political scholarship becomes important. Joseph R. A. Ayee's work on manifestos and elections in Ghana's Fourth Republic examined how the programmes of the NPP and NDC have shaped policy debate and, to some extent, electoral outcomes. His work reminds us that political parties are not simply vehicles for individual personalities; they are organizations that develop competing ideas and programmes. That has an important implication for internal party democracy. A presidential primary does not merely choose a personality. It generates ideas. Each candidate normally brings a policy programme, political diagnosis and constituency of support. Why should the party discard these ideas merely because one candidate wins? A better party would ask: What did Dr. Braimah see that Alhaji Abdulai may have missed? What did Sheikh Dokurugu propose that could strengthen the eventual manifesto? What organizational strengths did Hajjia Dimalo demonstrate?

The winning candidate's programme need not be discarded. But neither should the programmes presented by the other candidates automatically disappear. Reconciliation should mean more than telling defeated candidates to support the winner. It should mean examining what each candidate brought to the contest and determining what can strengthen the larger party project.

Frempong's Electoral Politics in Ghana's Fourth Republic similarly places Ghana's electoral experience within the broader development of multiparty politics and democratic governance, tracing electoral trajectories from the 1990s and drawing lessons for democratic consolidation. This strengthens the case for treating primary contests as part of a continuing political process rather than as isolated events. A primary should be the beginning of a new phase of party organization, not the funeral of the losing campaigns.

From Majoritarianism to Consensus within Parties

There is also a useful theoretical perspective from comparative political science. Arend Lijphart, in Patterns of Democracy, distinguishes between majoritarian and consensus models of democracy. His comparative study examines 36 democracies and analyses differences in how democratic systems distribute and share political power. Among the dimensions he examines are the concentration versus sharing of executive power and broader patterns of institutional power-sharing.

This does not mean Ghanaian political parties should become coalition governments. They are political parties, not states. But the underlying principle can inform internal party organization. A party can have a clear winner while still practicing consultation, accommodation and inclusion. In fact, this may be one of the more important reforms Ghanaian parties can consider. Winning should determine who leads. It should not determine who matters. That is the distinction.

What Scarrow's Research Adds
Susan Scarrow's Beyond Party Members offers another useful perspective. Her research examines how political parties have changed their relationships with members and supporters and why parties increasingly provide members with more meaningful opportunities for political participation. Her work specifically examines intra-party ballots and finds that such procedures can stimulate substantial political participation, while the effects of intra-party democratization depend partly on how parties define their political community.

This is highly relevant to Ghana. Why should a party member invest years in political mobilization if the party's internal system effectively tells anyone who loses a major contest that his or her political relevance has ended? A healthy political party should make participation meaningful. It should communicate something like this to its members: You may not win every contest, but your participation, ideas, networks and leadership remain valuable to the party. That is how parties retain talent. That is how they encourage constructive competition. And that is how internal democracy becomes more than the periodic act of putting ballot papers into boxes.

A Post-Primary Leadership Council

One practical solution could be the creation of what I would call a Post-Primary Leadership Council. This need not replace the party's National Executive Committee or any constitutionally established body. It would complement them.

The Council could be chaired by the elected flagbearer and include the leading presidential-primary candidates, together with other persons whose expertise is considered valuable.

Its responsibilities could include:

1. Policy integration: reviewing the programmes and proposals presented during the primary and identifying ideas that should be incorporated into the party's national platform.
2. Reconciliation: organizing joint engagements with constituencies and regional structures where the primary produced particularly strong divisions.
3. Campaign strategy: assigning former candidates specific national responsibilities according to their strengths.
4. Grassroots mobilization: using the networks built by each candidate rather than dismantling them.
5. Fundraising: deploying candidates with proven networks and credibility to help finance the national campaign.
6. Succession and leadership development: identifying future presidential, parliamentary and organizational leaders.

Such a body could turn a primary from a political battlefield into a political talent-identification exercise.

But There Must Be Objective Criteria

The deployment of defeated candidates should not be based simply on how many votes they received. Vote share is important, but it cannot be the only criterion.

The party should consider:

• policy and technical expertise;
• primary vote share;
• geographical spread of support;
• parliamentary experience;
• grassroots organizational capacity;
• communication skills;
• regional and demographic balance;
• fundraising and mobilization capacity;
• public credibility;
• ability to work with former rivals; and
• commitment to party unity.

This is important because the person who finishes second is not necessarily the person best suited to every other position. The primary tells the party something. It does not tell the party everything.

From Political Losers to Political Assets

Perhaps the language itself needs changing. Why do we call the second-place candidate a loser? He or she lost the contest for the nomination. That is true. But the person may have demonstrated extraordinary political capacity. There is a difference between losing an election and being a political loser. The former is a democratic outcome. The latter is a political judgment.

A candidate can lose a primary and still become one of the most valuable people in the party. The healthier political culture is therefore not one in which everybody must win. It is one in which people can lose honourably and continue contributing meaningfully.

Ghana Should Think Beyond the Next Election

This proposal also speaks to the broader question of political-party reform. Ghana has conducted repeated competitive elections under the Fourth Republic. The country has demonstrated considerable resilience in sustaining electoral democracy. But democratic consolidation is not simply about holding elections. It is also about building institutions capable of managing competition.

A political party should not be judged only by how it selects its flagbearer. It should also be judged by what it does with the people who did not win. That is where political maturity begins. If five capable people contest a presidential primary, perhaps the party should not think: “One person has emerged. Four have disappeared.” It should think: “Five people demonstrated different kinds of leadership. One has received the mandate. How do we use the strengths of all five?” That is a very different political philosophy.

Primaries as Searches for Leadership Teams

The fundamental reform I am proposing is therefore not that the second-place candidate must become Vice-President. It is not that the third-place candidate must become Speaker. It is not that every primary result should automatically translate into a government appointment. Those arrangements would create constitutional and practical problems. The deeper proposal is this: Ghanaian political parties should treat internal elections as searches for leadership teams rather than contests designed to produce one winner and several political casualties. The winner should lead. The Constitution must be respected. Party constitutions must be respected. But political talent should be retained. Candidate networks should be retained. Good policy proposals should be retained. Grassroots relationships should be retained. And former rivals should be given structured opportunities to contribute to the common political project.

This is where the Ghanaian electoral experience, comparative democratic theory and research on intra-party participation converge. They point toward a simple proposition: Democracy is not merely about deciding who wins. It is also about deciding what happens to everyone else after the votes have been counted.

A New Political Culture
Imagine a Ghana in which a presidential primary is no longer regarded as a war between factions. Imagine candidates campaigning vigorously, knowing that victory matters but that defeat does not mean political extinction. Imagine the winner immediately inviting the other major candidates to join a structured leadership process. Imagine the runner-up travelling with the winner to constituencies where the primary was particularly divisive. Imagine the third-place candidate's policy proposals being examined for incorporation into the national manifesto. Imagine former candidates becoming ambassadors of unity rather than leaders of disappointed factions. That would change the character of Ghanaian politics. It could reduce the bitterness associated with primaries. It could encourage strong candidates to remain within the party. It could give delegates more confidence that their votes are not wasted when their preferred candidate loses. And it could encourage candidates to compete on ideas rather than destroying one another because the political stakes are absolute. The challenge before Ghana's political parties is therefore not simply how to produce winners. It is how to build organizations in which winners and former competitors can work together.

The NPP's recent constitutional reforms concerning its leadership structures and internal elections, as well as continuing debates about party organization within the NDC, provide an opportunity to ask this larger question: How should Ghanaian political parties manage political talent after internal elections? That question deserves more attention than it receives. Because perhaps the real waste in Ghanaian politics is not that some candidates lose. Perhaps it is that after they lose, we too often behave as though they have nothing more to offer. They do. The candidate who came second may have lost the ballot but retained enormous political capital. The candidate who came third may possess ideas the winner needs. The candidate who came fourth may have organizational abilities the party lacks. And even the candidate who came fifth may have experience that can strengthen the movement.

So let us keep the winner. But let us also keep the talent. Let Ghana's political parties evolve from winner-takes-all politics to winner-leads-all politics, where the winner receives the mandate to lead, but the broader party retains the talents, ideas and supporters brought forward by the entire contest. The American experience teaches us that political rivals should not automatically be placed together in constitutional executive offices simply because of their electoral ranking. Ghana can learn the complementary lesson: Political rivals do not have to be given constitutional offices to remain valuable to the political organization. Perhaps that is the better way forward. Not winner-takes-all. Not automatic office-sharing. But winner leads, talent remains, and the party becomes stronger because of the contest.

References
Ayee, J. R. A. (2011). Manifestos and elections in Ghana's Fourth Republic. South African Journal of International Affairs, 18(3), 367–384.

Frempong, A. K. D. (2012). Electoral politics in Ghana's Fourth Republic. Accra: Yamens Press Limited.

Lijphart, A. (2012). Patterns of democracy: Government forms and performance in thirty-six countries (2nd ed.). Yale University Press.

Scarrow, S. E. (2015). Beyond party members: Changing approaches to partisan mobilization. Oxford University Press.

Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, Articles 60, 63 and 95.

Constitution of the United States of America, Article II, Section 1.

Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (1804).

FUSEINI ABDULAI BRAIMAH
+233208282575 / +233550558008
afusb55@gmail.com

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