We dominated the NDC, but 2.1 million of our people did not vote – Bawumia

Presidential candidate for the outgoing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has stated that the party was poised to win the 2024 presidential and parliamentary election but was affected by voter apathy.

He argued that the evidence on the ground and the amount of work invested during the campaign period indicated his victory in becoming Ghana’s president. However, 2.1 million of the party’s supporters failed to cast their ballots.

Addressing party communicators during a courtesy call at his residence, Dr Bawumia expressed his disappointment in the outcome of the December election, which forced him to concede defeat barely 15 hours after the polls.

It was a big disappointment, there's no doubt about it when the results came. Why was it a disappointment? Because all the work we had done was pointing to the fact that we would win this election. I mean, clear evidence on the ground.

As we went to all the 276 polling constituencies, it was clear that we were going to do well. But on the day of the election, something was amiss. Turnout was so low, and everybody was wondering what was happening, why, where are people? And that was from Axim all the way to Zebilla. It turned out that 2.1 million of us decided to stay. And it's almost as if they had a meeting and decided on the message.

He further pointed out that the NPP dominated the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in all aspects of the campaign, including social media, despite not receiving support from some key media houses.

We dominated the NDC in social media. I mean, by far very clearly. And we were working against their ownership of all support from key media houses, wasn’t it? So it put that at a disadvantage in many ways.

The Vice President disclosed plans to assess the reasons for voter apathy ahead of future elections:

We know all the individuals who did not vote in every polling station. So it's not guesswork. So the research is going to speak to them, individual by individual, polling station by polling station, to get a sense of why they did not vote.

The NDC’s John Dramani Mahama won the 2024 presidential election after receiving 6,328,397 votes (56.55%), while Dr Bawumia garnered 4,657,304 votes (41.61%). This reflects a significant margin of 1,671,093 votes.

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