[2][3] Following the formation of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), which ruled Ghana following the military coup d'état on 31 December 1981, there was pressure from the international community to restore democracy.

[5] On 9 December 2012, the Electoral Commission of Ghana declared NDC candidate John Dramani Mahama to be president-elect after a hotly contested race in which he won 50.7% of the votes cast.

[11] John Atta Mills ran again for the NDC in the 2004 presidential elections with his running mate Alhaji Muhammad Mumuni.

[18] 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.

[19] 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.

[21][22][23] On 25 June 2020 the NDC led by its General Secretary Asiedu Nketiah,[24] 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.

[26] During the 2024 Ghanaian general election, the NDC candidate, former President John Mahama, won a majority of votes, enough to win without a runoff.

[27][28] Mahama's running-mate Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang became the first woman to be elected as vice president of Ghana.

[31] The NDC decided to hold a vigil in memory of JJ Rawlings,[32] the founder of the party who died on 12 November 2020 at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.