Mussa Dankwah, a pollster and Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics, has called on political leaders to be honest about the nation’s economic circumstances, emphasising that ignoring citizens’ struggles only damages public confidence and costs votes.
Dankwah noted in a post on his social media account that MyNewsGh was able to view that his most recent tracking survey, which contrasted living standards between 2024 and the present, showed distinct changes in the public’s opinion of economic wellbeing.
“The standard of living now and in 2024 according to the tracking poll. Whatever economic indicators that have changed to make people feel like this, clearly is worth pursuing, he wrote.
He rejected official statistics, claiming that the results were solely based on voter feedback. “Someone said to me that economic condition in this country has not improved”.
He responded, “I decided not to use any BoG data or Cassiel Ato Forson data, I don’t trust government data, so I decided to use voters data, that is independent and direct from the horse’s mouth.”
Dankwah warned that it could be politically detrimental to ignore or minimise such voter sentiment.
“If you are in denial about these facts, then you will have issue with voters. In politics, especially today’s, being sincere makes you connect well with the new voters. Anything else, you will lose the trust and once you lose the trust, it is FINISHED,” he emphasized.
According to him, voters prefer to penalise administrations that reject their lived experiences. “When there is economic hardship or difficulty in certain areas of governance and you deny that fact too when voters clearly feel it, you get punished in any election,” he cautioned.
Drawing lessons from the recent U.S. elections, Dankwah noted that political denial of economic realities often leads to defeat.
“Trump and his team were in denial of the present economic hardship just like Biden did in 2024 and we saw what happened in America in the off-season elections. The Republicans lost every race held on Tuesday,” he observed.
Source: newsthemegh.com