Opinion polls about the upcoming elections on December 7, 2020, suggest that Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), will win with a first-round victory.
According to the results sampled from a section of voters in the upcoming elections, Nana Akufo-Addo’s main contender, John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will get 45.7% of total votes, with a 2% margin of error.
Nana Akufo-Addo will get 52.6% of the total votes, according to the polls conducted by Pollster, Ben Ephson.
“There are a couple of reasons why Mr Mahama will find it difficult to win. The first reason is that many nursing and teacher trainees do not trust that Mr Mahama will not withdraw their allowances again.
“The NPP has been able to convince them that Mr Mahama will punish them for voting against him NDC in 2016,” Mr Ephson explained in his Daily Dispatch newspaper.
John Mahama’s administration, in 2014, scrapped the teacher and nursing trainee allowance, a decision that became a source of agitation among many of the two groups.
The then President justified the decision on grounds that it will increase enrolment in the colleges of education.
He said while attempts to increase teacher intake at the training institutions failed due to the lack of funds to pay allowances, replacing that with the Students Loan Trust Scheme had increased intake from 9,000 to 15,000 in just a year.
The governing NPP under Akufo-Addo, made reinstating the allowance a major campaign promise and implemented it when it won power.
Many political analysts believe that decision contributed significantly to his inability to win the elections in 2016.
Although as part of his 2020 electioneering campaign, Mr Mahama has promised to keep the allowances, it seems that promise has not caught up with that section of the voting population yet.
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
