A report by IMANI Africa has revealed a tie in positive sentiments towards the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) on social media.
IMANI Africa explained that the period under observation for the report was the 11th of February to the 26th of February 2024.
The IMANI Africa’s Public Understanding and Literacy for Sentiment and Election (PULSE) report explained that the tie in positive sentiment shows there has not been any compelling event or pronouncement by both candidates of the parties to trigger any upsurge of positivity.
“Both (positive) sentiments of the NDC and NPP took very marginal hits. Interestingly, the results here show an even level of sentiment, which means people still feel the same way and positivity is largely unchanged. Both NPP and NDC had exactly 10.22% positive sentiment out of the total sentiments analyzed,” the report read.
Below is the full report
IMANI Africa noted that subsequent observations will be instructive to see how much change is recorded especially since it is still early days in the campaigns of both parties.
However, there was an increase in negative sentiments for both parties.
Despite having more social media mentions, the NPP had more negative sentiments towards the party as opposed to the NDC.
“Purely negative sentiment over the period increased for both party candidates. People that spoke of NPP negatively however had a higher percentage increase from around 21% to just over 28%, representing a 7% increase in negative sentiment against NDC’s approximately 4% increment in negative sentiment for the period under review.”
“It seems to be that even though there was a ministerial reshuffle it did not have or carry enough weight to change the level of positivity of NPP, but rather triggered negative sentiments overall. Public faith in politicians will be an interesting phenomenon to look at,” the report added.