This is Article 12 of a 24-part weekly series on voter trust and voting intentions in Africa. In the previous article, we examined how technology and transparency are reshaping political expectations and creating a new battlefield of trust. We saw that voters now evaluate political parties continuously rather than only during election seasons. This article moves to the next phase of the trust cycle by examining a widely misunderstood reality: most political trust is not lost during campaigns, but between elections. Campaigns often reveal the damage, but they rarely create it.
Many political parties focus intensely on election periods because campaigns are visible, urgent, and measurable. Rallies are held, advertisements are launched, manifestos are published, and turnout operations dominate strategy. These activities matter, but they often distract parties from the quieter years in which trust is actually built or weakened. Between elections, citizens observe how leaders govern, how parties treat supporters, and whether promises are taken seriously. It is during these low-noise periods that long-term judgments are formed. By the time campaigns begin, many voters have already decided how much trust remains.
Trust declines between elections when supporters feel forgotten after helping to secure victory. Grassroots activists who worked voluntarily during campaigns often expect recognition, communication, or continued inclusion afterward. When they experience silence, exclusion, or sudden distance from leadership, disappointment sets in. That disappointment is rarely dramatic at first; it appears as lower enthusiasm, reduced participation, and emotional detachment. Over time, these small withdrawals become politically significant. Parties then mistake weak mobilisation during campaigns as laziness when it is often accumulated disappointment.
Governance performance is another major driver of between-election trust loss. Citizens do not expect perfection, but they do expect seriousness, responsiveness, and visible effort. When governments appear disorganised, dismissive, or unable to coordinate basic priorities, trust weakens steadily. Even where external shocks such as inflation, debt crises, or global instability play a role, voters judge whether leaders communicate honestly and act competently. If they see excuses without direction, patience declines. Later campaign slogans struggle to repair what daily experience has damaged.
Internal party behaviour during non-election years is equally important. Leadership contests, disciplinary actions, appointments, and resource allocation all send signals about fairness and inclusion. When internal processes appear manipulated or dominated by narrow circles, members carry those grievances quietly for years.
They may still wear party colours publicly, but their emotional investment weakens. Once emotional commitment declines, voting intention becomes conditional rather than loyal. Campaign messaging cannot easily restore a sense of internal injustice. Complacency is one of the most dangerous threats between elections. Parties that win successive victories often assume that their coalition remains secure.
Strongholds are taken for granted, youth are expected to remain loyal, and neglected regions are treated as politically captive. This creates strategic blindness. Trust does not survive on memory alone; it must be renewed through ongoing engagement and fair treatment. Parties that rely on historical loyalty often discover too late that inherited support has become hollow.
Communication failures accelerate this process. Between elections, many parties communicate downward rather than outward. Citizens hear speeches, but not explanations. Supporters receive slogans, but not genuine engagement. In the absence of credible communication, rumours and opposition narratives fill the vacuum. Trust weakens not only because of bad events, but because silence allows others to define reality. Effective between-election communication is therefore less about propaganda and more about maintaining relationship capital.
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African political history repeatedly illustrates this pattern. Parties that appeared electorally dominant have sometimes suffered sharp setbacks after years of internal drift, weak responsiveness, and growing emotional distance from supporters.
Observers often describe these defeats as sudden or surprising. In reality, the visible loss was usually the final stage of a long invisible process. Campaign season merely exposed what had already happened beneath the surface.
Youth disengagement is especially important in this context. Younger voters often enter politics through hope, identity, or desire for change. If their between-election experience becomes one of exclusion, broken promises, or symbolic use without real opportunity, trust fades quickly. They may not immediately join opponents, but they become harder to mobilise. Some withdraw entirely from partisan politics. For parties, this creates a future problem disguised as present silence.
Religious, civic, and professional groups also observe parties between elections. They watch whether leadership remains humble in office, whether dissent is tolerated, and whether institutions are respected. These groups often shape broader opinion through informal influence networks. When their confidence declines, the reputational cost can be significant long before polling numbers shift. Trust loss therefore extends beyond card-bearing members to wider communities of interpretation.
The central lesson is that campaigns are accelerators, not foundations. They can activate existing trust, convert undecided voters, and sharpen contrasts with opponents. What they cannot easily do is rebuild trust that has been neglected for four years. Parties that understand this invest in relationship maintenance, internal fairness, policy credibility, and constant engagement between elections. Those that ignore it often enter campaigns with enthusiasm on stage but erosion underneath.
The next article deepens this phase of the trust cycle by examining authority itself. Article 13 will explore how parties manage power without losing moral authority, showing why arrogance, selective justice, and the misuse of incumbency often damage trust faster than opposition attacks ever could.
>>>Dr. Samuel Kenneth Adolphus Bernard Crabbe is a political leader, entrepreneur, and scholar focused on restoring trust, discipline, and effectiveness within political parties and governance systems in Africa. He has served as Greater Accra Regional Chairman and 2nd National Vice Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), where he played key roles in party organisation, national strategy, and institutional oversight. Beginning his political journey as a Constituency Organizer, he has operated across every level of party structure and understands, from firsthand experience, how internal systems shape electoral outcomes.
His work in politics is grounded in a clear conviction: parties do not lose elections because of messaging alone – they lose when their internal systems weaken, discipline erodes, and trust breaks down. His writing focuses on how political organisations can rebuild credibility, strengthen internal democracy, and re-engineer their structures to earn and sustain voter trust.
Dr. Crabbe holds a PhD in Business and Management from the University of Bradford’s Institute of Digital and Sustainable Futures, where his research examined how failures in governance, transparency, and accountability undermine trust in financial systems. He is a Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom, teaching Leadership and Change, Organisational Behaviour, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work, and Sustainability and Responsible Governance – disciplines he applies directly to political and institutional reform.
He is the Founder of Omaxx, a decentralised equity crowdfunding platform accepted into the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Innovation Pathways Programme, designed to address structural failures in capital formation. He is also Founder and CEO of Omanye Group, a UK-headquartered global payments company, and Founder of IFG Ghana, which connects African students to global education pathways.
His earlier ventures include ACS-BPS, Ghana’s first large-scale data-entry company, and his founding role in Ghana International Airlines – both of which reflect a long-standing commitment to building systems at national scale. He is the author of The Silent Crisis at the Heart of Equity Crowdfunding, a work that argues that systems fail not at the point of design, but in what happens after implementation.
Across politics, business, and academia, Dr. Crabbe advances a consistent thesis: Africa’s central challenge is not a lack of ideas or talent, but a failure of systems to convert potential into sustained outcomes. His work focuses on redesigning those systems to produce trust, performance, and long-term national competitiveness.
