Religion and the Public Sphere: Religious Involvement and Voting Patterns in Ghana's 2004 Elections

Abstract

Since the end of the cold war, the sub-Saharan African region has witnessed an increased pace of democratization. Ghana has evolved an orderly political succession in a vibrant democratic culture, and has conducted five successful elections since the early 1990s. These elections have been deemed free, fair, and devoid of the fraud that is common in many African countries. As a result, Ghana is considered a beacon of hope for democratic activists in sub-Saharan Africa as they challenge the absence of good governance in their own nations. Studies that examine Ghana's new democratic experiment abound, but nearly all focus on ethnicity and the electoral process. Far fewer have examined religion, a powerful identifiable force in the Ghanaians' lives, and how it affects the electoral process. This study uses 2005 Afrobarometer Survey data to examine the links between religion and voting patterns in Ghana's 2004 elections. Findings suggest that, in contrast to Muslims, Ghanaian Christians, especially the Protestant groups, were more supportive of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) than the National Democratic Congress (NDC). Implications for the findings are suggested, at least with respect to social inequalities and political discourse in Ghana.