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On December 14, 2024, the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) Dennis Miracles Aboagye said on Joy News TV that John Mahama lost the 2016 election by over a million votes.
“You recall in 2016 when we won by a million, we thought it was historic. In fact, people thought it is not something that anyone could repeat,” he said on Newsfile.
This is not the first time the Spokesperson for Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the NPP’s flagbearer for the 2024 election, has made this claim. In an X post titled “The John Mahama Fact,” Dennis Miracles Aboagye made the same claim on February 5, 2024.
In addition to Mr. Aboagye, some other politicians, including the Majority Leader and Member of Parliament for Efutu, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, have said the same thing. At a press conference he held on April 19, 2024, the Majority Leader said, “The NDC has not changed since 2016, when they lost the elections by over 1 million votes.”
But this claim is false.
On December 9th 2016, the then Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC), Charlotte Osei, who doubles as the returning officer for the presidential election declared Nana Akufo Addo as the winner of the 2016 general election with a total vote of 5,716, 026, representing 53.85%.
In that declaration, she mentioned that John Mahama had 4,713,277 votes. The difference between the two leading candidates was 1,002,749 votes at the time.
This result, according to the EC Chairperson, did not include that of four (4) constituencies: Afram Plains North, Upper West Akim, Sawla Tuna Kalba and Tamale Central.
Ms Osei explained that results from the four constituencies were yet to be collated due to disputes over the outcome and noncompletion of counting in one of the constituencies because electorates there couldn’t vote on the 7th but the next day.
The voter population of the four constituencies were 220,270 adding that the results of those 4 constituencies were “immaterial to the final outcome of the presidential results” and thus proceeded to declare the winner of the election without those 4 constituencies.
However, when the final results including the 4 constituencies were published by the EC, the margin of 1,002,749 votes between Nana Akufo Addo and John Dramani Mahama dropped below a million votes.
The official results show Nana Akufo-Addo secured 5,767,076 votes as against 4,807,229 Mahama polled in all the 275 constituencies. This brought down the margin of defeat the NDC candidate, John Mahama suffered to 959,847 votes.
2016 Election results for 275 constituencies for John Mahama and Akufo-Addo
| Name | Number of Votes |
| Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo (NPP) | 5,767,076 |
| John Dramani Mahama (NDC) | 4,807,229 |
Therefore, claims suggesting that John Mahama lost the 2016 elections by over one million are false.
