It’s July 2020 and the NPP is heading into an election holding 169 out of the 275 seats in parliament. 2016 was indeed a great year for the ruling party. So, for 2020 we decided to see what the parliamentary map looks like and if the NPP will be able to hold onto its massive majority.
The breakdown:
- Our approach to modeling the parliamentary race was to come up with a set of probabilities that could classify each constituency as “SAFE”, “LIKELY” or “COMPETITIVE” for a given party.
- A SAFE seat is one in which our model assigns a party more than 80% chance of winning. A LIKELY seat is one in which a party has more than a 2 in 3 chance of winning. A COMPETITIVE seat is anything below that.
- Of the 275 constituencies, our model counts 96 as ‘SAFE’ for the NPP compared to 84 for the NDC.
- Looking at the set of 41 LIKELY seats, the model assigns 21 to the NPP and 20 to the NDC. This leaves 54 seats that are currently rated COMPETITIVE.
- The NPP’s 13 seat advantage can be attributed to the party’s dominance in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions which collectively account for 68 out of the party’s 117 SAFE and LIKELY seats. Additionally the party is fairly strong in Ahafo, Bono, Central and Western Regions.
- Given this starting position, it is no surprise the NPP has a smaller hurdle of winning only 21 out of the 54 COMPETITIVE races in order to retain their parliamentary majority.
- In other words, the NPP can afford to loose 31 seats and still hold onto parliament. The NDC by contrast, needs to win 34 COMPETITIVE seats to have a clear shot at being in the majority next year.
