A worse symptom is voter hostility to voting, with less than half (49%) of eligible South Africans casting a vote in 2019. People either sit on their hands or don't bother registering as voters. It is easy to write this off as voter apathy, but it is more accurate to say that no party has offered anything near enough to energise and mobilise these voters.
In late 2023, Change Starts Now (CSN) commissioned an extensive baseline survey before the party was launched, which had a sample of 9,000 respondents drawn in appropriate proportions from all provinces and across urban/rural areas. The data analysed here is for registered voters only, regardless of voter intention.
The Western Cape is the first province where the DA has lost its majority status in the poll. This downward trend started in 2019 when the DA won a respectable 56%, down from 59% in 2014. The current 42% is a pretty remarkable drop given the ongoing media coverage of Western Cape governance as the national gold standard – voters seem not to agree.
The ANC in the Western Cape has continued to decline, from 29% in 2019 to 24%, and is only half as popular as the DA. The EFF has almost doubled, but from a small base, and still fails to reach double figures in the poll. In the Western Cape, "other" (7%) comprises some small but essential growth points – the ACDP has 1%, but so do newer entities, including Build One South Africa, led by the DA’s former leader Mmusi Maimane, and the Patriotic Alliance with a respectable 2%.
Coalition government may have reached the Western Cape, which, in addition to 7% choosing small parties, sees 18% undeclared. The DA needs to mobilize roughly half of this latter group to breach the 50% mark – if not, it will face difficult choices for coalition partners. This is new territory for the provincial DA, which (in the Western Cape) may perhaps suffer the “sins of incumbency.”
On election day, all opposition parties, large and small, should win more votes than polled, as people are forced to choose (or spoil their ballot paper).
KwaZulu-Natal is the third province where the ANC fails to hit the 40% mark, coming in at 35%, a catastrophic drop from 50% in 2019. With the EFF at 17% and the DA at 20% in Gauteng, the coalition prospects can go either way – though the ANC remains the decider. If an ANC/DA or ANC/EFF coalition emerges, the smaller parties will lose influence (ActionSA has 3%, the IFP 2%, the Freedom Front Plus 1%, as do Build One South Africa and the Patriotic Alliance).
The Free State province has seen the ANC break through the four-in-10 barrier, with 42% support, dramatically dropping from 61% in 2019. The Democratic Alliance (DA) and EFF have managed steady growth, and governing will be undertaken by a coalition chosen by the ANC, not the opposition. KwaZulu-Natal has joined the Western Cape as being beyond the reach of the ANC, while Gauteng's ANC remains significant. Still, the behaviour of 17% of undeclared voters will have a considerable impact.
The ANC is fast becoming a rural party, with 33% in metropolitan areas and 38% in peri-urban areas. The DA and EFF remain constant, with fewer respondents refusing to answer the voting question and fewer selecting smaller parties. In rural areas, the ANC stands at 50%, with the EFF doing better. Still, no one other than the ANC has managed to capture the political imagination of most rural voters.
The EFF performance is essential but not a profound change to electoral politics. EFF support remains constant in every province but is stuck well below the 20% mark nationally. It is outperforming the DA in four provinces and may soon challenge it as the official opposition in South Africa. However, the party's growth is incremental, growing by a couple of percentage points here and there, and seems to have a vote ceiling just like the DA does.
As the ANC decays, the DA and EFF are fighting hard, but neither can persuade more than a fifth of voters nationally to vote for them. The new parties barely register on the voting map, and the new world struggles to be born.
