cable 08ACCRA1473, GHANA ELECTIONS: POLLSTER SEES A SQUEAKER
VZCZCXRO5523
PP RUEHPA
DE RUEHAR #1473/01 3251011
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 201011Z NOV 08
FM AMEMBASSY ACCRA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7266
INFO RUEHZK/ECOWAS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RHMFISS/CDR USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 ACCRA 001473
SIPDIS
DEPT FOR AF/W
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/19/2018
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PINS PREL KDEM GH
SUBJECT: GHANA ELECTIONS: POLLSTER SEES A SQUEAKER
Classified By: Polchief Gary Pergl for reasons 1.4 B and D
¶1. (C) SUMMARY. Independent pollster and newspaper editor
Ben Ephson predicted that the presidential elections will
require a runoff, but that the opposition National Democratic
Congress (NDC) will pick up at least 14 Parliamentary seats
to close the gap with the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP),
which currently has a 34 seat lead in the 230-seat
legislature. He forecast that the 2008 elections will be the
fairest ever in Ghana because of the resources the NDC has
poured into vetting and training a loyal cadre of polling
agents. Ephson said that many journalists are on the NPP
payroll, and that in a last ditch effort to gain votes, the
NDC might try to out NPP candidate Nana Akufo-Addo as a drug
user in the closing weeks of the campaign. END SUMMARY.
¶2. (U) Ben Ephson met with the political section on November
14 to file his monthly report on the $40,000 DHRF grant he
received to do election polling. Ephson is the editor of the
independent newspaper Daily Dispatch, and the leader of
Ghanalert, an NGO that focuses on election monitoring and
public opinion polling. Ephson said that his team had
completed its polls in the 3 northern regions and the Ashanti
region, and would have results from the rest of Ghana by
December 1. He walked Poloffs through each of Ghana's 10
regions, exploring which constituencies would likely change
parties and why. Based on his data, he expects the NDC to
gain a minimum of 14 Parliamentary seats, while the NPP could
lose enough seats to drop below a majority. (NOTE: The NPP
currently holds 128 seats, the NDC has 94, and 8 seats are
held by minority parties and independents. END NOTE) Ephson
is also convinced that the Convention Peoples Party (CPP)
candidate will play a spoiler role in the presidential race.
He believes that the CPP candidate is drawing the majority of
his support from the NPP, although this will not translate
into more parliamentary seats for the CPP. Ephson predicts
that no party will gain a majority in presidential polling,
throwing the election into a runoff likely to take place
December 28.
¶3. (U) Ephson's 2004 polls came closer than anyone's to
predicting the outcome of that election, but his methoology
is far from scientific. For his polls on the presidential
election, he sends pollsters through targeted markets and
neighborhoods with a set of 12 questions, starting with
delivery of services such as water and electricity, and
ending with "who do you think will win the election?" His
field workers randomly survey 200 voters in each
parliamentary constituency. He claims that his margin of
error in presidential polling is plus/minus four per cent,
but his logic is hard to buy.
¶4. (U) For Ephson's parliamentary picks, however, his
predictions appear to be based on sounder research. He
pointed out constituencies in which the NDC had paid for an
independent to run and siphon votes from a vulnerable NPP
candidate, and other areas where NPP intra-party rivalries
could lead to NDC wins. Ephson sees the NPP potentially
losing six out of its eight current seats in the Northern
Region and five out of its sixteen seats in Greater Accra. He
predicts that the NDC will also pick up seats from two
smaller parties, the Peoples' National Convention (PNC) in
the Upper West Region and the CPP in Central Region. Ephson
felt confident enough to name NPP constituencies in Accra
that he felt were vulnerable. He also noted that in Ashanti
Region, the heartland of the NPP, a number of independents
were contesting seats. These candidates were historically
NPP, but lost out through the party's sometimes bitter
parliamentary primary process to less appealing candidates.
Ephson predicts that the NPP will see, at best, a much
reduced majority.
¶5. (U) In 2004, Ephson said, the NPP gained thousands of
fraudulent votes because of NDC's lack of vigilance at the
polling stations. This year, he said, the NDC was training
teachers, students, professionals and other literate party
faithful to act as polling agents at all 22,000 polling
stations. He predicted that these trained party agents would
make this the fairest election in Ghana's history.
¶6. (C) Ephson also said that the NPP was imploding in the
final weeks of the campaign. President Kufuor has not been
campaigning actively on behalf of NPP aspirant Nana
Akufo-Addo, who was not his choice of candidates.
Akufo-Addo, according to Ephson, was irritated that Kufuor
chose last week to formally unveil the newly-built and
sumptuous Presidential palace, a project that many Ghanaians
associate with political excess. When asked if there might
be a "November surprise," Ephson said that he expected the
NDC, which has already been hinting at NPP connections to
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Ghana's burgeoning narcotics trade, might decide to openly
accuse Akufo-Addo of being a drug user.
¶7. (C) The NPP, according to Ephson, had offered him 30,000
Ghanaian Cedis ($25,000) to publicly tilt his polls towards
their party, an offer he refused. Other journalists, he
said, are on a virtual retainer from the NPP. He also told
Poloffs that the NPP had approached the cash-strapped PNC
party and offered to pay for their polling agents, a proposal
they sensibly declined. Finally, he said that the NPP was
paying students in Cape Coast 100 Cedis to transfer their
votes in an attempt to elect an NPP member as Parliamentarian
from that key constituency.
¶8. (U) COMMENT. For a supposedly independent pollster,
Ephson is hardly impartial in his personal politics,
admitting openly to being an Nkrumahist and member of the
CPP. His vote for CPP candidate Paa Kwesi Nduom might be a
wasted vote, he said, but he hopes that it sends a message to
both major parties. Ephson's predictions on Parliamentary
elections sound plausible, but as noted in previous cables,
any authoritative prognostication on the outcome of the
presidential elections strikes us as suspect at best.
TEITELBAUM
