Misrepresenting Larry Gibson

EVER SINCE Arthur Kennedy published his book, 'Chasing the Elephant into the Bush', and more so since the NPP presidential primaries got going, several commentators have used the analysis of Larry Gibson to score points against Nana Akufo-Addo.

Leading that assault is one lady whose fighting spirit I admire so much, the former MP for Kwadaso and Mr. Kyerematen's main woman in the Ashanti Region, Hilda Addo.

The argument of the Hildas is that Larry Gibson predicted that Prof Mills was more popular than Akufo-Addo, so for as long as Mills is running, Akufo-Addo cannot be expected to win.

Larry's first opinion poll was conducted in May 2008, five months after Nana Akufo-Addo was elected for the first time as flag-bearer. Prof Mills had been consistently on every NDC presidential ticket since 1996.

The poll was conducted just weeks after NDC launched its campaign and selected its running mate.

Larry Gibson had done another poll which showed that former President Rawlings was more popular than President Kufuor.

There is a lot of talk these days that the NPP lost the 2008 elections because the party did not market well the achievements of President Kufuor.

Yet, Larry Gibson's polls had shown that Ghanaians simply were not convinced about the NPP record on the economy – the most important indicator on all the electoral indices.

Until Larry Gibson's findings, we were all looking at the major indices concerning the significant reduction of incidents of poverty and the expansion of people's purchasing power, high GDP, etc.

We thought the economy was NPP's strong campaign message so we kept comparing records, forcing John Mahama to say on his appointment as running mate to Mills that comparing records was mediocre.

Larry showed to us that voters trusted the NPP, but on Education and Health – no wonder several campaign messages after June focused on these two social areas.

Larry Gibson's work was assisted by the Danquah Institute, and I can say that only five people, including me but excluding Dr Kennedy, have copies of the full details of his work which helped inform the 2008 campaign.

Arthur K, like the candidate, only benefited from the briefings of the opinion polls and other analysis made by Larry. But, let me limit myself to the book, which has now become the Gospel of the Hildas.

The chapter in the book on Larry Gibson starts: “The question of what was going to be our fundamental approach to the election was not clear until June 2008. Till then, the candidate had spent time visiting the Constituencies we lost and generally touting the NPP's economic record.”

The fundamental approach to the election was clear from February, when the campaign team was outdoored.

Perhaps, what was fundamentally wrong about the approach was the decision that the candidate should stay away from constituencies where NPP had incumbent MPs, to avoid being negatively used.

But, the thinking of the party at the time was based on the volatile nature of the primaries and how the presidential candidate was being used to score points. It was this same issue that led to the NPP losing its majority in Parliament while still coming first in the presidential race on December 7.

This meant, key regions such as Central, BA, Western, Ashanti and Eastern, where the NPP controlled a clear majority of seats, were not tackled aggressively by the candidate until after the parliamentary primaries, which took the best part of April and May.

In fact, the first ever billboard of the NPP presidential candidate was mounted on June 23, 2008 – yes! With a new candidate on the ballot paper and with less than six months to sell him, the campaign team had no option but to splash the nation with his billboards.

To appreciate how important years of name recognition and photo identification are in Ghanaian elections, there were registered voters in Cape Coast in the Central Region, Techiman in the Brong Ahafo Region, Suhum in the Eastern Region and Wa in the Upper West Region who could neither say who the NPP presidential candidate was nor identify him from his photograph in October 2008!  Yes, less than two months before the election.

E T Mensah once famously told a friend when rumours about Mills' health were making the rounds, “Even if we have to put him in a wheel chair and sell him we will do so!”

He was merely saying that Mills was “the man we have marketed over the years. We neither have the resources nor time to market someone else. That would be too risky.”

It is easy to be won over by the instant mass media popularity of certain candidates and think that Accra and Kumasi represent the entirety or microcosm of the Ghanaian electorate.

Had Nduom decided to pull out on December 7 to put his support behind one of the candidates, we would have easily concluded that he added some 6-8 percentage points to that candidate's ratings.

Yet, when the results came in, Dr Nduom, the media's favourite candidate, the man whose campaign class and image the youth were said to find most appealing, did worse than his party's parliamentary candidates. Akufo-Addo at least outperformed his parliamentary candidates.

Larry Gibson conducted another survey on a contest between Messrs Kufuor and Rawlings, where the question was who they would vote for if election were held between the two men in 2008.

Larry said, quoting from Arthur K's book, “Rawlings would win. He said that should tell us about how people on the streets saw things, compared to us.”

Yet, this was conducted at a time that the NPP knew President, Kufuor, was very popular and more so because of his superior social and economic record.

Arthur K, perhaps not furnished with details of all the polls conducted by Larry, confuses his readers by not indicating clearly which of the polls he was referring to because Larry came back excited that things had changed in the Central Region.

Ben Ephson even added to that with his own poll which showed that NPP would increase its 16 seats in Central Region; yet with slightly reduced presidential votes. As it turned out, the presidential candidate did better than his parliamentary candidates in that region.

Larry Gibson initially indicated that NPP should write off the Central and Greater Accra regions. When he personally went back to the coastal areas, the issues he was confronted with included lack of jobs, pair trawling and premix fuel. In short, the people had turned against the ruling party.

Larry Gibson was so shocked by NPP's poor showing in the Central Region that he decided to take a trip to the coastal areas with one of my researchers, Ouborr Kutando, posing as researchers from the two men's old school, Harvard University.

They returned convinced that NPP was going to lose about half of their seats.

Three areas that were shockingly bad for the NPP were Mfantsiman East, Cape Coast and Elmina. I personally told the Regional Minister about Elmina and Cape Coast, he disagreed. Ouborr said he told Asa Bee that he was going to lose, the MP disagreed.

Hilda's argument that Mills was more popular than Nana in 2008 actually worked against her preferred candidate.

At least, with Mills' superior popularity, Nana beat Mills on December 7 and lost by less than 41,000 votes three weeks later, after his party had lost its parliamentary majority.

Hilda's candidate is yet to be tested. He may well be more popular but the only way to find out is for him to be tested.

That would be too chancy when his chances are analyzed by Ghana's electoral trends.

By Qanawu Gabby

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