Features
False Predictions Of Election Results By Pollsters And Emerging Consequences
Political pollsters conduct opinion polls for political parties, politicians, advocacy groups, elected and government officials, think tanks and corporations among other groupings. They use their knowledge of statistical analysis, social behaviour and survey methods to question representative samplings of either the general population, or certain demographic groups regarding political issues.
Their job duties among other things, are to conduct research on specific issue or set of issues by reviewing reference material and conferring with clients, create or supervise the creation of carefully worded questions in order to generate clear response and devise strategies regarding how and when the survey will be conducted.
DUTIES OF POLLSTERS
They also perform interviews in person, over the phone, by email or online, analyze survey data, while being sure to adhere to recognised standards regarding the interpretation of complied data, communicate survey results to clients and ensure prompt and accurate assessment of findings.
Indeed, this is a specialised field with a clearly defined aims and objectives that will produce good, perfect and accurate results for clients so that they will depend or rely upon them to plan their strategies to promote their business objectives and other tangible assessment. The practitioners in this noble profession who may be political science degree holders or students pursuing political science in various tertiary institutions and universities as well as well- established institutions, have an in-depth knowledge about election and how it is conducted and above all a deep understanding about the whole process of election, data collection and gathering, interviews among others and are well trained to accomplish the noble task.
POLLSTER IS SPECIALISED JOB
It is important to state that not every person can just stand up and assume the role or title of pollster for the sake of it. You may have a little background on mathematics and data gathering and collection, but that will not guarantee you to be a pollster or to parade yourself as one since it is a specialised area. I am not a pollster and I cannot be one because I don’t have the qualities and pedigree to be one.
I am a journalist, but a very good one though, with the simple task of educating, informing and entertaining people about issues and events happening around them so that they will be well informed in order not to be left behind, fall astray or kept in the dark as far as news is concerned.
Besides, I continue to use my God-given talent to write about all manner of interesting articles for readers to assimilate and enjoy. I criticise when it is due and offer constructive suggestions when and where necessary. This is the type of profession and the job I have been trained to do and I enjoy it each and every day.
SELF-STYLED POLLSTERS
I have decided to go or follow this tangent because of the way some self-styled pollsters are churning out inaccurate results to Ghanaians of late, thus creating tension and anxiety in the political space. I do not intend to mention names of people or individuals involved in this falsehood but it is happening and the recent by-election in Kumawu in the Ashanti Region and Assin North in the Central Region, attested clearly to this fact.
I am not downplaying or degrading every pollster in this country but only cautioning that those who don’t have the pedigree to forecast and predict accurately need to advise themselves because their actions can cause controversy and chaos among the people. These ‘try and error’ predictions must give way to proper and constructive analysis and data collections that are result-oriented.
KUMAWU BY- ELECTION
In the Kumawu by-election that was held on May 23, 2022, it was clear and evident that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) was going to win the election hands down because the area is a stronghold of the party. You don’t need any pollster to predict the outcome of that election. It was a forgone conclusion for the NPP candidate, Ernest Yaw Annim who won by 70 per cent representing 15,264 votes with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) candidate, Kwasi Amankwaa, obtaining 3,723 votes representing 17.29 per cent of the valid votes cast. The only duty of a pollster in the Kumawu by election is to predict whether there were appreciation or depreciation of votes for both candidates.
ASSIN NORTH BY-ELECTION
The Assin North by-election was a different ‘ball game’ altogether. The place had been a swing constituency with both the NDC and the NPP winning at a point in time during the general elections and that made that election very unique in terms of who would emerge the winner. More so, the candidates involved, especially the NDC candidate, James Gyakye Quayson, who was booted out of parliament by a Supreme Court ruling on his dual citizenship, gave cause for those pollsters to do their own predictions. The NDC defied all odds and fielded the embattled Quayson while the NPP as a strategy brought Charles Opoku from the same area where the NDC candidate hails from to provide a stiff opposition.
NPP IN ASSIN NORTH
Prior to that election, the NPP marshalled all resources including excavators and earth moving equipment to the constituency to re-shape some of their bad roads in the midst of rains. An astrotech football pitch had to be commissioned in the rain by the Vice President Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, all in an attempt to garner and gather more votes for the NPP candidates. The powerful team led by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo himself, travelled to the Assin North for a full-scale campaign for their candidate.
NDC AT ASSIN NORTH
The NDC with Its leader, John Dramani Mahama, MPs and party functionaries also went on campaign trail in the Assin North Constituency. Accra was virtually deserted on the election day. Days before the election in the Assin North, pollsters, some of whom were not known, started putting and throwing figures across based on survey they claimed they have conducted in the area, having spoken to a few people in the constituency. Most of these pollsters predicted a done deal for the NPP candidate because of the last-minute campaign by the President which gave them high hopes. However, their predictions did not materialise as Quayson managed to win convincingly with 17,245 votes representing 57.56 percent of the valid votes cast with the NPP Charles Opoku placing second with 12,630 votes representing 42.15 percent.
TRY AND ERROR POLLSTERS
All those scenarios pointed to the fact that the so-called pollsters were only engaged in a ‘try and error’ or speculation business, using the high -profile personalities involved in the campaign exercise as their yardstick, especially in the case of the Assin North by-election. In fact, there had been several occasions in the past when some of these most established institutions have had accurate results in their predictions, but this time round, they got everything wrong.
POLLSTERS AND 2024 ELECTIONS
Very soon, we will be heading towards the presidential and parliamentary elections and these organisations and individual pollsters will start doing their own thing to predict the outcome of the elections. Nobody is baring them from carrying out their individual mandate and there is no law in this country that bars any person or group of persons from carrying out election surveys and predicting the outcomes. However, in doing this self-assigned job, one need to be careful and circumspect about these outcomes in order not to deceive and cause disaffection among the populace. It is interesting to note that even so-called pastors, evangelists, prophets of doom and ‘what not’, have joined the fray of pollsters, predicting and churning out election results which eventually turned out to be false.
NPP FLAGBEARERSHIP RACE
Shortly, the NPP will be electing its flag-bearer in a hectic contest involving 10 contestants namely, Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, the current Vice President of Ghana, Mr. Allan Kwadwo Kyerematen, Boakye Agyarko, Kwabena Agyei Agyepong, Francis Addai-Nimoh, Dr Kofi Konadu Apraku, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, Kennedy Ohene Agyapong, Joe Ghartey and Kwadwo Poku. All these contestants are reputable and qualified personalities who have what it takes to be the presidential nominee for the NPP. However, it is only one who will get the nod to lead the party in the 2024 presidential election.
As usual, the so-called pollsters, religious groupings and forecasters will be at their wit end doing their own thing and predicting the outcome of the primaries in what they termed data collection from delegates who will be casting their ballots to pick one among the lot. When they fail in their attempt with their “try and error” business, they will then turn to the supporters of the NPP and apologise for their ineffectiveness. We need to thread cautiously in this regard.
Contact email/WhatsApp of author: ataani2000@yahoo.com 0277753946/028933366
By Charles Neequaye
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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