Analyst Explains Why “Swing Seats (Regions)” Notion Is No More Relevant To Ghanaian Polls

In the past, regions such as the Greater Accra Region, Central Region, Western Region and Brong Ahafo have had themselves tagged as “swing regions”. This is because they have not been voting for a particular political party for long period of time. In most cases, they vote differently every four years! Other regions, however, have voted for some specific parties over the years. As a result of their voting trend, they’ve been tagged as the “World Bank” of some political parties. For example, the Ashanti Region and the Eastern Region have always voted massively for the ruling New Patriotic Party whilst the Volta Region, Upper West and Upper East have also voted massively for the opposition National Democratic Congress.

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Well, according to an analyst, this year’s result has shown that the swing regions do not determine any final results as it has been held in the past.

Eugene Osei-Tutu wrote;

***Mercy – In the last 48 hours, I’ve seen my analysis of the votes from Ashanti Region trend, some engineering several meanings, some very disturbing for me.

Well, I concede I can’t stop what people make out of my writings but in all these analysis, let’s stick to the substance.

In the United States, a cathedral of democracy, the states are NOT same electoral wise! California has more electoral votes than Nevada. This is instructive to note.

In our jurisdiction, it’s popular votes so it will be a bit disingenuous for me to think or for someone to insinuate that I meant the other regions should be ignored.

The data shows NDC making more gains in Ashanti than Volta and Oti combined. It is therefore worth saying, that the next NDC government should do more in the region to get more of the votes since its world bank is becoming a central bank. Whiles they find out what is accounting for the vote reduction in their world bank, it will be foolhardiness for them to ignore the gains in their opponents world bank. So both must go in tandem, increase in Volta and Oti and Ashanti.

For the NPP, it is only commonsensical to expand the frontiers of work in the Ashanti region BUT not neglecting the other regions because every vote counts. Greater Accra had 3 interchanges in 3 years. I live here in Kumasi, the 2nd biggest commercial city, we had none so what is wrong if I ask the government to do more here?

Whiles the whole nation did a 79% voter turnout, Ashanti did 82%. And both parties profited from this.

Lastly, my surname has nothing to do with the analysis I put out. I was born breed in the Eastern region. I’m from Asuom in the Eastern region.***

This is one of many reasons why people are starting to doubt the “swing regions” and their perceived electoral magic that has dominated the electoral processes of Ghana for so many years now.

What do you make of this?