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Claim: Paul Adom-Otchere claims John Mahama amassed 100,000 votes between the Dec. 2020 and Dec. 2024 election.
Verdict: False. DUBAWA’s checks reveal that the then flagbearer and now president had 6,213,812 and 6,591,790 votes in the Dec. 2020 and Dec. 2024 polls, respectively. This indicates a vote margin of 377,978 between the 2020 and 2024 elections.
Full Text
Renowned Ghanaian broadcaster Paul Adom-Otchere made several headlines during the previous administration and before the elections in 2024.
In some of his headline comments, he is on record criticising pollster Mussa Dankwah’s research reports on Good Evening Ghana before the 2024 elections.
“Mussa Dankwah, you are disgracing political research. What is this? Where is this coming from? What is this? We don’t like that! If you didn’t study political science and you’ve gone to learn it from some cocoa farm, don’t come and embarrass us,” he said on his prime-time evening programme.
Interestingly, the head of Global InfoAnalytics was vindicated because most of his predictions concerning the 2024 elections were right. The pollster agreed to appear on his vilifier’s programme on Feb. 18, 2025. Adom-Otchere apologised to Mussa Dankwah ‘for being critical of his analysis,’ which turned out to be spot on.
Moderating and interviewing the pollster after the last national elections in the country post-election, Adom-Otchere claimed that John Mahama amassed 100,000 votes over four years.
“But Mahama only added 100,000 votes over four years,” he said during the interview.
Find Adom-Otchere’s comments from 56:40 to 57:00 on Metro TV’s YouTube page. As of Feb. 24, 2025, the livestream had garnered 13,000 views and 95 likes.
DUBAWA decided to investigate this claim to combat electoral misinformation and disinformation.
Verification
The Electoral Commission of Ghana (EC) is the constitutional body in charge of elections and electoral services.
DUBAWA’s analysis revealed that the two main political parties, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP), garnered majority votes in the 2020 and 2024 general elections.
Both parties collectively garnered 98.661% and 98.17% of the presidential votes in 2020 and 2024, respectively. The NPP had 51.302% and 41.75% in 2020 and 2024, respectively. On the other hand, the NDC was 47.359% and 56.42% in 2020 and 2024, respectively.
In figures, Nana Akufo-Addo, the winner of the 2020 presidential elections for the NPP, had 6,730,587 out of the total votes. John Mahama came second with 6,213,812 votes. The EC declared these results without results from the Techiman-South constituency.
In 2024, Mahama, representing the NDC, won the presidential election with 6,591,790 votes. The NPP’s Bawumia came second with 4,877,611 votes. Similarly, the EC declared the results without the Ablekuma-North constituency results.
According to data from the EC, the NDC, represented by Mahama, garnered 6,213,812 and 6,591,790 votes in 2020 and 2024, respectively. This indicates a 377,978 increase in votes between the two elections.
Further, we contacted Adom-Otchere to provide the context, and source of data hence his conclusion on the vote margins. However he is yet to respond as of the time of publication.
Conclusion
The claim that John Mahama amassed 100,000 voters over four years is false. Data from the EC indicates a 377,978-vote margin between Dec. 2020 and Dec. 2024 for Mahama.
