2012 Ghanaian general election

2012 Ghanaian general election

← 2008 7–8 December 2012 2016 →
Presidential election
Turnout79.43%
 
Nominee John Mahama Nana Akufo-Addo
Party NDC NPP
Popular vote 5,574,761 5,248,898
Percentage 50.70% 47.74%

Results by region

President before election

John Mahama
NDC

Elected President

John Mahama
NDC

Parliamentary election

All 275 seats in Parliament
138 seats needed for a majority
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/–
NPP Nana Akufo-Addo 47.51 122 +15
NDC John Mahama 46.41 148 +32
CPP Samia Nkrumah 0.73 1 0
PNC Hassan Ayariga 0.66 1 −1
Independents 2.50 3 −1
This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below.
Speaker before Speaker after
Joyce Bamford-Addo
Independent
Edward Adjaho
NDC

General elections were held in Ghana on Friday 7 December 2012 to elect a president and members of Parliament in 275 electoral constituencies.[1] Owing to the breakdown of some biometric verification machines, some voters could not vote, and voting was extended to Saturday 8 December 2012.[2] A run-off was scheduled for 28 December 2012 if no presidential candidate received an absolute majority of 50% plus one vote. Competing for presidency were incumbent president John Dramani Mahama of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), his main challenger Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and six other candidates.[3]

Incumbent president John Mahama was declared winner of the presidential contest with 50.7% of the vote, just a few thousand votes over the threshold for avoiding a run-off election. Nana Akufo-Addo received 47.74%.[4] The opposition alleged tampering with results by the Electoral Commission (EC),[5] and filed a petition at the Ghanaian Supreme Court to review the election results. The NPP produced more than 11,000 so-called "pink sheets" to the judges who had to compare them to similar papers from the EC, NDC and possibly other parties. These pink sheets state the results as counted in single polling stations, before aggregating them to any higher level, such as municipality, district and region. The NPP claimed that there were differences between the results as stated immediately after their counting in polling stations, and those which were used in aggregations, and that this can be proven by the pink sheets. In a separate part of the procedure, the EC was challenged to prove that 14,000 expat Ghanaians had voted abroad, and failed to produce any registered voters in foreign countries due to, so EC, the fatal work of a virus in its computer. The election petition led to great changes in the electoral system that helped ensure a high level of transparency in the voting system and collation of the results.

Mahama was elected to a full term less than five months as president having succeeded John Atta Mills, who died suddenly in office in July 2012.[6]

  1. ^ "Regional Distribution of 275 Constituencies". Electoral Commission of Ghana. Archived from the original on 13 February 2013. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  2. ^ "Ghana election: Voting enters second day". BBC. 8 December 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  3. ^ "Profile of 2012 Presidential Candidates". Official website. Electoral Commission of Ghana. Archived from the original on 31 December 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2012.
  4. ^ "Ghana election: John Mahama declared winner". BBC News. 10 December 2012.
  5. ^ "Ghana's Mahama wins election, opposition cries foul". Reuters. 9 December 2012. Archived from the original on 1 February 2016.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference AlJazeera25Jul was invoked but never defined (see the help page).