Pollster Musa Dankwa of Global Info Analytics has said that an exit poll in the Akwatia by-election last Tuesday showed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) candidate, Solomon Kwame Asumadu was going to win contrary to an earlier poll before the election, which had indicated that the National Democratic Congress candidate Bernard Bediako Baidoo was the favourite candidate to win.

However, he said he relied on his earlier survey, which had predicted a win for the NDC candidate with 53 per cent against the NPP's 47 per cent, because in his view, respondents in the exit poll were not being candid with his research team.

Speaking in a radio interview with Citi FM on Wednesday [September 3, 2025], Mr Dankwa described the exercise as one of the most difficult in his career.

“In the exit poll, NPP was leading with 51 per cent and NDC 49 per cent. And I said, if this is the exit poll, that means NDC has won. Because these ethnic minority groups, they were playing with us in the field,” he explained.

He said he became uneasy when almost every ethnic minority group except Akans indicated in the exit poll that they were not backing the NDC, even though historically they had supported the party.

“But then I took comfort in the fact that 50 per cent of the respondents said they were driven to vote based on developmental projects. And about 60 per cent of those people were voting for NDC. I knew NDC was going to win, even though it is difficult, you can’t predict what these guys were doing,” he added.

At the end of the polls, the NDC candidate, Bernard Bediako Baidoo, won with 18,199 votes against the NPP’s Solomon Asumadu, who polled 15,235 votes. The Liberal Party of Ghana’s (LPG) Patrick Owusu placed third with 82 votes.