the New Patriotic Party. In the general elections held on 7 December 2004, the party won only 94 of the 230 seats. 2008 elections On 21 December 2006, Mills was overwhelmingly elected by the NDC as its candidate for the 2008 presidential election with a majority of 81.4%, or 1,362 votes. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah was second with 8.7% (146 votes), Alhaji Mahama Iddrisu was third with 8.2% (137 votes), and Eddie Annan was fourth with 1.7% (28 votes). In April 2008, John Mahama was chosen as the party's vice-presidential candidate. On 3 January 2009, Mills was certified as the victor of the 28 December 2008 run-off election and became the next president of Ghana. 2012 transfer of power and elections President John Atta Mills died, after a short illness, in the afternoon of 24 July 2012 while still in office. Vice President John Dramani Mahama of the NDC was sworn in as president that evening. The NDC picked John Dramani Mahama for their presidential candidate and sitting vice president Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur as their vice-presidential candidate for the 2012 elections. 2016 primaries In November 2015 after securing an overwhelming 1,199 118 out of a total of 1, 286, 728 votes representing 95.10% party members in the presidential primaries, President John Dramani Mahama was endorsed to lead the NDC in the 2016 general elections. 2020 elections Ahead of the 2020 elections, In February 2019, John Dramani Mahama was confirmed as the candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress to contest in the 2020 elections, the incumbent president Nana Akufo-Addo who unseated Mahama in a 2016 election, capitalizing on an economy that was slowing due to falling prices for gold, oil and cocoa exports. He won the National Democratic Congress primaries by securing an overwhelming 213,487 votes representing 95.23 percent of the total valid votes cast with the other six contenders managing with about 4 percent of the votes. On 25 June 2020 the NDC led by its General Secretary Asiedu Nketiah, lost a case in the Supreme Court of Ghana in which the party had sought to achieve the inclusion of old Voter ID cards in the Electoral Commission's compilation of a New Voter's Register, among other reliefs. In the 2020 elections, 18 members of the party who sought to run as independent candidates lost their membership. All who endorsed the forms of the candidates and participated in their campaigns were also