Opinion polls must be based on scientific research – Pollster

Founder and team lead of Scorpion Research Agency (SRA), a Volta region based poll-watching organization Edwin Kwame Amemasor, has said that, individuals and organizations in the business of predicting election outcomes must base such predictions on scientific research.

He said such predictions and projections although sometimes not very accurate, affects the decisions and voting patterns of individual voters and the mass of the electorate.

Amemasor said these in an interview with Ghananewsonline.com.gh at Aflao.

According to him, the agency had always conducted scientific research findings from the grassroots out of which it makes it’s projections and predictions.

“For instance, our latest research work was prior to the NDC presidential and parliamentary primaries held on May 13 – we made some predictions and projected some candidates to win the primaries in some constituencies mainly in the Volta region where we are based – Our projections were nearly accurate in terms of percentages and even in real figures. Most of the candidates we projected wins for, emerged victorious at the polls,” Amemasor said.

The research agency in the lead up to the primaries, projected incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) for Ketu South, Abla Dzifa Gomashie to win the primaries with 1,237 votes representing 64.9% of total votes expected to be cast, with Foga Nukunu, her closest contender projected to garnner 659 votes representing 34.6% of the votes in that constituency.

A third contender, Jim Morti was also projected to secure 10 votes, representing 0.5% of the ballots.

The projections for the Ketu South primary was very close to accurate as the incumbent MP secured 1,545 votes to beat Foga Nukunu who gained 913 votes with Jim Morti bagging 26 votes after the balloting.

The agency also made similar projections in the primaries for Keta, Anlo Ketu North, and North Dayi Constituencies which also produced near accurate outcomes reflecting Scorpion’s scientific projections.

Interestingly, the agency set the Ketu North contest between Edem Agbana and Gabriel Kwamigah Tanko as the most popular and leading contenders, leaving out John Adanu who in the twist of events secured 368 votes, to tie with Edem Agbana who also had 368 votes after a recount of the ballots.

Scorpion Research Agency, which had been operating in the Volta region for sometime now, gathers it’s information through phone contacts and face to face interactions with the electorate where questionaires are given out for answers.

The agency’s research works have a 95% confidence level and a 2% margin of error, with it’s data analysis representing the raw scores of each aspirant by the total number of respondents who take part in the surveys, multiplied by one hundred.

Amemasor expressed gratitude to all members of his team for their dedication in the course of the research.

He was particularly grateful to Mr Desmond Kweku Tsewu for his unflinching support and advice towards the agency’s work.

The pollster was hopeful that Scorpion Research would continue to carry out it’s independent and unbiased research during subsequent elections in a bid to deepen Ghana’s fledgling democratic governance.

By Leo Nelson || Ghananewsonline.com.gh