Key Points
- Low voter turnout among NPP members caused the party’s defeat.
- Aboagye cited sharp drops in NPP votes in key regions.
- NPP plans a strong return despite losing the 2024 election.
In the general elections of 2024, Miracles Aboagye, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s director of communications, has reaffirmed that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) failed because its members did not vote.
Low turnout among NPP supporters caused 2024 election loss
A week after the polls, Aboagye appeared on Joy News Newsfile, where he claimed that data from past elections indicated that a sizable section of the party’s base did not cast ballots on December 7.
“The fact that our people did not vote is one of the main reasons this result is as it is, based on the data,” he stated.
Aboagye backed up his assertion with voter data from multiple areas. “The information is available. Taking emotions out of the equation, we can see that the NPP received 145,000 votes in the Ahafo area in 2020 and 113,000 votes in 2024. In 2020 and 2024, the NDC had 116,000 and 130,000, respectively. In 2020, the NDC received 1,326,489 votes in Greater Accra, while the NPP received 1,253,179. However, the NPP only had 681,000 in 2024, which is half of what we were able to do in 2020,” he said.
Adding that NPP supporters who did not cast ballots were not necessarily supporting John Mahama and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), he insisted that the low turnout was the only reason for the party’s defeat.
The NPP’s flagbearer and vice president of Ghana, Dr. Bawumia, has also blamed the party’s defeat on a precipitous drop in voter turnout.
NDC’s victory not outright, says Bawumia’s campaign team
Aboagye claims that because the NDC’s 2024 performance was comparable to their 2020 outcomes, they did not win by a wide margin.
“I want to remind everyone that we gave the NDC this election; they didn’t win it by a landslide. Their 2020 numbers remained the same. The analysis is straightforward because ours has decreased by 40%,” he stated.
Despite the defeat, Aboagye said he was confident the NPP would win big in the next elections.
