Pollster and Executive Director of Global InfoAnalytics, Mussa Dankwah, has urged political leaders to be sincere about the country’s economic situation, stressing that denial of citizens’ hardship only erodes public trust and costs votes.
In a post shared on his social media handle, Dankwah explained that his latest tracking poll compared the standard of living between 2024 and the present, revealing clear shifts in public perception about 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 said the findings were based entirely on voter feedback, rejecting official statistics. “Someone said to me that economic condition in this country has not improved.
“I decided not to use any BoG data or Cassiel Ato Forson data, I don’t trust government data,” he said with a lighthearted tone. “So I decided to use voters data, that is independent and direct from the horse’s mouth.”
Dankwah cautioned that ignoring or downplaying such voter sentiment could prove politically costly. “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 tend to punish governments that dismiss 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 warned.
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.
