‘Yes’ would win referendum but would have fallen short

One of then-candidate Nana Addo’s major campaign promises was to give citizens the opportunity to elect their Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to oversee development at the local government level. It is fair to say that thus far, this development has so far been elusive. Most stakeholders and observers put that down to these executives having their loyalty to the President who appointed them rather than those they are meant to serve.

The major issue to be resolved was whether to make political parties like the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress participate when those elections come into being. They are currently banned from participating at any kind of local elections although it is widely known that they sponsor candidates from time to time. For this to happen, the constitution would need to be amended via referendum. There had to be at least 40% turnout and 75% of the electorate had to vote YES for the vote to count, a very high bar.

There was a lot of talk about the merits or otherwise of taking our already divided national politics to the local level but the results of our poll seemed to be leaning towards allowing the NPP and NDC to present candidates for these elections. This was despite several prominent social commentators and even the NDC — in opposition but one of the major beneficiaries of this change — coming out in support of the NO campaign. However, just about half of users polled on Speakupp (49%) voted to support partisan local elections as opposed to 40% saying No to it.

A further 11% were not sure where they stood on the issue so could have been swing votes to either camp. Interestingly, there seemed to be a wide divide on the issue among female voters as opposed to male. The number of females supporting Yes was double the number saying No. 60% of them voted Yes while only 30% voted No. Among males, it was almost statistically evenly split among them with around 45% voting either way. That swing vote was still present but it is quite interesting to see overwhelming support for the Yes vote among females. Could this point to a feeling that females who have historically been underrepresented in national politics felt this referendum was the chance they needed to be able to become more active and relevant in politics?

As at the writing of this article, the President on December 1, 2019, has called off the referendum citing a lack of consensus on the matter. As we stated earlier, the threshold for victory was quite high but they were regardless on course for a victory that would have probably fallen short. The cancellation may have doomed those prospects entirely.

This poll was conducted between 14th November 2019 and 4th December 2019 with 703 respondents.