Exploring the Mahama-NDC Defeat in the 2016 election: Insight from pre-election surveys

Ghana’s 2016 presidential elections was closely contested between Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the incumbent President John Dramani Mahama, with Akufo-Addo emerging winner with 5,755,758 votes while Mahama received 4,771,188 votes.

This marked the first time in the Fourth Republic that an incumbent government had lost the elections in the first round, and with such a huge margin.

This paper attempts to offer insights into the defeat of the Mahama led-administration based on empirical information from the two pre-election surveys conducted in July and October 2016 by the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana).

Full report available here