Ahead of the 2024 elections, a Professor at the Department of Statistics in the University of Ghana, has used his statistical prowess to drop his predictions of the 2024 elections results. Professor Ezekiel Nortey, together with his colleagues, Dr. Richard Minkah, Dr. Kwame Asah Asante and Mr. Edmund Fosu Agyeman, held a lecture on the topic, “Assessing Swing Constituencies in Ghana: Empirical Evidence from the 2016 and 2020 General Elections”, used their forecasting tool to generate the likely results of the 2024 election.
A summary of the estimated National votes reveals a picture of a tough competition between former President, John Dramani Mahama, and Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia. This results debunks “the comfortable lead of the National Democratic Congress” picture painted by other analysts. According to the predicted results, the NDC leads with a 49.64%, as opposed to the NPP’s 48.89%. The estimate was predicted to lie between a 95% confidence interval of 49.07% to 50.21%. For the NPP, the predicted result is expected to lie between a 95% confidence interval of 48.32% and 49.46%. The lecturers relied on past election data to make this analysis, unlike other analysts that uses data from surveys, which reflects the current standings and views of Ghanaians. See the summary of the results.
What does this results imply? Relying on historical electoral data, the National Democratic Congress is expected to win, but by a smaller margin. However, the actual results may reflect three possibilities; a case where the NDC wins with an actual margin which is wider than predicted (the resulting error may capture all the other factors influencing the election results aside electoral trends), a case where the NPP wins but with a smaller margin and a case where the NPP wins with a wider margin, like the case of the 2016 elections. What are your views on the is election prediction?
SOURCE: m.dailyadvent.com
