Treat Global Info Analytics polls with contempt – Dr. Mahama

Technical advisor to Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, Dr. Tiah Abdul Kabiru Mahama, has challenged the findings of a purported survey published by Global Info Analytics.

The said survey revealed several outcomes among which one pointed to the likely victory of former President John Dramani Mahama against Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, should elections be held today.

Contributing as a panelist on MetroTV’s Weekend News Analysis show, Inside Pages, Dr. Mahama stated a litany of research methodological errors and inconsistencies fraught within the survey. According to the researchers, they employed a mixture of convenient and random sampling techniques in the conduct of the survey, however, Dr. Mahama maintains forcefully that such an approach does not only amount to an erroneous result but is also grossly alien to scientific research and political polling, as the conclusions of such a study can neither reflect the views of the population mean nor be generalized.

On the chosen sample size by the researchers, Dr. Mahama submits that the published figure does not reflect the survey’s own stated confidence interval. The survey relied on a sample size of 5,235 from a population of 4 million voters to produce a Confidence Interval (CI) of 99%. This is woefully inadequate as asserted by Dr. Mahama, who contends that to arrive at a 99% CI for this population, then researchers ought to have engaged about 16,500 respondents.

The Technical Advisor to the Vice President also waded into the debate over some of the survey’s outcomes and highlighted what he convincingly demonstrated as incoherent results. Citing a section of the results, that reported voters trusting his Boss, Dr. Bawumia over Alan Kyerematen in the areas of managing the economy, creating jobs, and building infrastructure, and yet preferred to vote for Alan over Bawumia, he was of the impression that the survey lacks internal and external consistency.

Also in challenging this controversial finding of the survey, he quizzed why the researchers would find it wise to engage respondents leaning toward the NDC with a question of who they would vote to emerge as the New Patriotic Party’s flagbearer for the 2024 elections, between Dr. Bawumia and Alan Kyerematen. According to him, this approach would not yield a realistic outcome, owing to the remoteness of the actual contest, which will require a designated electoral college, from the general populace.

Concerning the headline results of John Mahama’s supposed combined trouncing of Dr. Bawumia and Alan Kyeremateng should there be a contest today, Dr. Mahama believes the approach birthing this outcome is questionable and misleading. He maintains that such a contest leaves both NPP candidates handicapped and offers the NDC candidate an undue advantage. This is because NPP bias respondents had two choices to split their votes among, whereas NDC respondents had a single choice.