Why I Think Mahama Is Toast

John Mahama is toast. This is not something I say lightly. I generally try to remain cautious about predictions, because the prediction business is a humbling one. I have never been especially bullish on Nana Addo, and I spent most of the year arguing that this was basically a neck-and-neck race that would go down to the wire. But in the end, two things stand out:

One, Nana Addo has a consistent, significant lead among independent voters, which increasingly looks like a double-digit lead. This is especially clear in national polls. It’s been a hard enough number for the past few weeks now, that there’s little chance that Mahama can turn it around in the 16 days remaining in this race. In fact, Mahama has been underwater with independents almost continuously since the middle of 2013.

Two, to overcome losing independents by more than a few points, Mahama needs to have a decisive advantage in NDC turnout, roughly on the order of – or in some places exceeding – the advantage he enjoyed in 2012, when NDC nationally had a few points advantage. Yet nearly every indicator we have of turnout suggests that, relative to the NPP, the NDC are behind where they were in 2012. Surveys by two largest professional pollsters, actually suggest that NPP will have a turnout advantage, which has happened only once (kufour era) in the history of exit polling and probably hasn’t happened in a presidential election year since 2004.

Those two facts alone caused me to conclude at the end of last week that Mahama is toast – perhaps lose a very close race, but lose just the same. That conclusion is only underscored by the fact that, historically, there is little reason to believe that the remaining undecided voters will break for an incumbent in tough economic times. He's toast, and the fact that he has remained competitive to the end in the two key regions he needs to win (Central and Greater Accra ) will not save him.

Independents’ Day

Three types of people vote: NDC voters, NPP voters and Independents. Traditionally, NPP candidates get in the vicinity of 90% of the votes of NPP supporters, and the NDC get a similar. This is more or less true over time and in national races.

It is usually the case that if you want to know who is winning an election, you look at who is winning independent voters. Mahama has lost independents, and quite possibly well into double digits. With no sign that he’s winning the crossover battle, partisan turnout is his only hope.

Modeling Turnout

We’ve established that Mahama, having won independents four years ago, is now losing them. If the electorate looks like 2012, of course, that’s not a fatal problem. But that’s a seriously dubious assumption.

Needless to say, if those surveys accurately depict the electorate, this will not even be close. Is that possible?


Conclusion

The waterfront of analyzing all the factors that go into my conclusion here is too large to cover in one post, but the signs of Mahama’s defeat are too clear now to ignore. Given all the available information – Akufo-Addo’s lead among independents, the outlier nature of the 2012 turnout model, the elections held since 2008, the party ID surveys, the voter registration – I have to conclude that there is no remaining path at this late date for Mahama to win comfortably. He is toast.

Mahama’s partisans have argued that he doesn’t need to; that he can pursue the rare path of winning the key regions. Time permitting, I’ll come back later to why I don’t think this flies if you take a close look at the region-by-region polling using the same assumptions about turnout and independent voters. But I don’t buy that either.