This is Article 16 of a 24-part weekly newspaper series on voter trust and voting intentions in Africa. In the previous article, we examined what successful African political parties do differently and identified the organisational habits that help them remain resilient over time. We found that strong parties invest in internal democracy, emotional connection, organisational competence, and long-term thinking.
This article turns to the opposite side of the equation by examining one of the most dangerous stages in the trust cycle: the period when parties believe they are winning while trust is quietly collapsing beneath them. This stage is particularly dangerous because the indicators of decline are often mistaken for evidence of strength.
One of the most consistent findings in political science is that electoral success and political trust are not the same thing. A party can win elections while simultaneously weakening the foundations of future support. Across Africa, trust in political institutions has been declining even in countries where elections remain competitive and governments continue to win mandates.
According to Afrobarometer’s survey of 39 African countries, trust in ruling parties declined by 16 percentage points between 2011 and 2023, while trust in parliaments declined by 19 points and trust in presidents declined by 12 points. Most strikingly, only 37% of Africans expressed trust in their ruling party, while only 30% trusted opposition parties. These figures suggest that electoral success alone is a poor measure of institutional health.
The first reason parties misdiagnose their situation is that they confuse control with trust. When leaders can win internal elections comfortably, command party structures, and dominate public messaging, they often assume that trust remains intact. Yet control and trust operate differently. Control can be maintained through rules, resources, incumbency, or organisational hierarchy. Trust, by contrast, depends on voluntary belief that the organisation remains fair, competent, and aligned with its values. A party may therefore appear united while quietly losing emotional commitment among its members and supporters. By the time that loss becomes visible, it is often advanced.
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The second reason parties misread trust is that they overvalue crowds. Political rallies create powerful visual signals of support, especially in Africa where mass mobilisation remains an important part of political culture. However, attendance is not the same as trust. Crowds may be motivated by curiosity, identity, entertainment, patronage, or social pressure. Trust requires something deeper: confidence that the party deserves continued support in the future. History repeatedly shows that large rallies can coexist with declining voter commitment. When parties measure enthusiasm rather than trust, they often fail to recognise early warning signs.
Ghana’s recent electoral experience provides a useful illustration of this distinction. Between the 2020 and 2024 elections, the New Patriotic Party experienced substantial declines in voter support in some of its most strategically important regions. In Greater Accra, the party’s presidential vote fell from approximately 1.25 million votes in 2020 to about 682,000 in 2024. In the Ashanti Region, traditionally regarded as a stronghold, the party’s vote declined from approximately 1.8 million to 1.37 million. These shifts did not emerge overnight. They reflected a longer process in which voter perceptions evolved between elections before eventually becoming visible at the ballot box.
Another reason parties believe they are winning while trust is eroding is that they confuse silence with satisfaction. Most supporters do not immediately announce their disengagement. Instead, they withdraw gradually. They attend fewer meetings, volunteer less frequently, stop defending the party publicly, and reduce their emotional investment. This pattern is especially common among younger members and grassroots activists who feel overlooked. Because the withdrawal is gradual, leaders often fail to detect it. Yet by the time dissatisfaction becomes vocal, the trust deficit may already be severe.
Success itself can accelerate trust erosion. Winning elections creates access to power, appointments, resources, and prestige. While these benefits strengthen organisational influence, they also create incentives for gatekeeping, factional competition, and complacency. Leaders become surrounded by supporters who reinforce positive messages and filter out criticism. Internal warning signals are interpreted as disloyalty rather than valuable feedback. As a result, the organization becomes less capable of recognising emerging threats. Trust declines not because information is unavailable, but because uncomfortable information is ignored.
A particularly dangerous form of decline occurs when parties begin to assume that identity-based support is permanent. Across Africa, many parties enjoy strong backing from particular regions, ethnic groups, religious communities, or historical constituencies. Over time, however, leaders may begin to treat this support as guaranteed. They stop listening as carefully, invest less in engagement, and focus resources elsewhere. The result is what might be called identity arrogance.
Supporters remain publicly loyal for a period, but their emotional connection weakens. Eventually, turnout falls, enthusiasm declines, and voting intentions become more fluid than leaders anticipated. Communication can also create a false sense of security. Parties often become highly skilled at managing narratives, defending decisions, and projecting confidence. While effective communication is important, it becomes dangerous when it substitutes for self-assessment.
A party that explains away every criticism may become incapable of learning from mistakes. Supporters begin to notice the gap between official messaging and lived experience. Once that gap becomes too large, trust declines regardless of how persuasive the communication strategy appears.
The broader lesson is that trust erosion is usually invisible while it is happening. Citizens rarely wake up one morning and decide they no longer trust a political party. Instead, trust weakens through repeated experiences that create doubt about competence, fairness, inclusion, communication, or participation. Each experience may seem minor on its own. Together, however, they reshape how voters interpret the party. By the time electoral consequences emerge, the underlying trust problem has often existed for years.
The TRUST–VOTE Cycle™ helps explain why this pattern is so common. Trust erosion is not an event; it is a process. Parties that focus only on election results often miss the signals generated by declining participation, growing cynicism, reduced emotional connection, and perceptions of unfairness. These signals appear long before electoral collapse becomes visible. The challenge for political leaders is therefore not merely to win elections, but to monitor the health of trust continuously.
Seen through this lens, the greatest threat to political parties is not opposition strength but self-deception. Organisations that believe victory proves trust often stop asking difficult questions. They interpret survival as validation and control as legitimacy. Yet the evidence from Africa suggests that trust can weaken even while parties appear strong. Electoral results eventually reveal the truth, but by then the opportunity for easy correction has usually passed.
The next article examines one of the most important mechanisms through which this hidden erosion occurs. Article 17 will focus on delegate systems, vote buying, and trust decay, exploring how participation structures intended to strengthen representation can sometimes undermine trust, weaken emotional connection, and contribute to long-term organisational decline.
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.
