South Africa’s ANC Support Drop Risks Richest Province, Poll Shows

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Support for South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has slipped ahead of May elections and the party could lose its majority in the Gauteng province, home to the country’s industrial hub and capital, a quarterly poll conducted by the South African Institute of Race Relations shows.

Of 1,611 registered voters surveyed last month, 54.7 percent said they supported the ANC on the national ballot, down from 56 percent in a December poll. The proportion of respondents that said they backed the Democratic Alliance increased 3.1 percentage points to 21.8 percent, while support for the Economic Freedom Fighters rose 1.2 percentage points to 12.2 percent.

Based on a 71 percent voter turnout, the ANC would end up with 55 percent of the national vote, the DA 24 percent and the EFF, which split from the ANC six years ago, would win 11 percent, the Johannesburg-based SAIRR said. The poll has a 3.3 percent margin of error.

The election on May 8 may be the toughest test yet for the party that has dominated Africa’s most-industrialized economy since the end of apartheid in 1994. Support waned through Jacob Zuma’s scandal-tainted nine-year administration and new President Cyril Ramaphosa needs to persuade voters that corruption revealed through several judicial inquiries is a thing of the past.

Gauteng Alliance?
In Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, the ANC’s support stands at 41.6 percent, the DA at 32.4 percent and the EFF at 18.2 percent, the poll showed. The ANC lost control of the two key municipalities in the province in the 2016 local government vote. In a 70 percent turnout scenario, the ruling party would win about 47 percent.

Losing its majority in Gauteng could push the ANC to forge an alliance with one of the opposition groups to maintain control. That could force it to make policy concessions on a national level.

“Faced now with both discontent and apathy, the party’s historical inability to grow its share of the electoral pool means it is disproportionately affected by a change in voting intention towards it” in Gauteng,” the SAIRR said in a statement. Its challenge “is not only to win back and reinvigorate its base, primarily from the EFF, but to try and grow beyond that. As things stand, the latter seems unlikely,” the group said.

Source: Bloomberg Business News