voting cattle
If there is one similarity between the impeachment of United States President Bill Clinton in the USSenate and the campaign for South Africa’s next election, it is that we know what the outcome of both processes will be before they even get under way.
While many analysts and members of opposition parties outwardly put on a brave face and say that this is to be expected at this point in the country’s history, inwardly they are puzzled by what they see as voters’ “foolish” behaviour.
Some attempt to explain this phenomenon by focusing on the racial patterns evident in the 1994 election and subsequent opinion polls, and argue that elections in South Africa and other divided societies are really “tribal” affairs and resemble ethnic or racial censuses rather than informed choices. Thus, the vote becomes an expression of communal solidarity between members of a given laager and the party that represents it.
Cruder versions of this argument point to communal intolerances that coerce votes out of unwilling citizens. The most racist variants point to the emotional value that black voters get out of voting for the African National Congress – an emotional value that somehow overrides material interests. I wish I had a rand for every time I’ve heard someone in the New National Party or Democratic Party camp sniff: “Blacks are still voting with their hearts, not their heads.”
While academics can afford to make such analytical blunders, party strategists have no such luxury. If they hold on to these images of voters, especially of black voters, they will become self-fulfilling propositions. Communally based electoral campaigns, or campaigns that fail to build trust across communal lines, will simply reproduce communal voting patterns – entrenching existing lines of electoral competition.
Such negative images of the voter prevent opposition strategists from considering the range of possibilities that present themselves in the present political environment and from taking the steps to break out of their woeful situation.
Indeed, many of these same problems also apply to ANC strategists in places like the Western Cape, which often excuse poor performance among coloured voters and the total lack of support among whites as results of racial fears or sheer anti-black racism in those communities.
In order to develop a vibrant multiparty democracy, political leaders and strategists need to take a more accurate and optimistic view of the voter.
As political scientist VO Key once said: “Voters are not fools.” While they may not collect all the “facts” or perform calculations of the expected utility offered by one party, they do not wield democracy’s most cherished tool in an irrational manner driven by fear or prejudice.
While voters may not be very well informed, they are not stupid. In the words of another political scientist, Christopher Achen, voters do not ignore the information they do have, and they do not make up information that they don’t have.
People vote for who they think will govern best. Their decisions are based on what they know – or on what they think they know. Where there is no information, they either draw inferences from what they do know or look to the views of others.
More to the point, regardless of the extent to which they are able to read or listen to the things candidates say, the average voter possesses a wide range of politically useful information.
A previous article in the Mail & Guardian pointed to the range of information that voters can infer from the demographic profiles and campaign styles of parties and candidates, (“Time for a make-over, Mickey Mouse”, December 18 to 23 1998). But voters also possess a significant degree of information about what candidates and parties have done in the past. And what they have done is often a more reliable guide to how they will behave in the future than what they promise to do.
Most importantly, voters are able to look to many elements of everyday life to judge how things have been going in the country, and thus, how the government has been doing.
As consumers, people know whether prices are going up or down, and whether salaries are keeping up. As taxpayers, they know whether the government is taking more taxes this year than last year. As workers, they know whether jobs are more or less secure than last year.
The clear implication of this is that the ANC presently finds itself in a favourable strategic situation, not simply by default due to a lack of real opponents, but also through its efforts in government and how these have been received by voters.
Far from the image of a racially driven, tightly committed and blindly loyal electorate, the Opinion ’99 surveys reveal a realistic, discerning electorate that is, on balance, satisfied with what the government has done in its first term. They are willing to give the government positive evaluations in some areas, but can be quite negative in others.
Voters are preoccupied with, and very dissatisfied with, continued joblessness, rising crime and an increasingly volatile and less optimistic economic future. They give the government very critical marks for its performance in these areas.
For the first time in the new dispensation, in September 1998, we found that more voters thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. All of this followed on the heels of what must have been the darkest days of South Africa’s economy in the new dispensation in July and August 1998. These findings also corresponded, perhaps as predictably, with the low point in recorded support for the ANC (51%).
To this, the crude racial or ethnic argument would reply: “See! People are dissatisfied, yet they’ll march back into the voting booths and give the ANC another five years.” They would strongly imply either blind loyalty or sheer ignorance.
Yet many of these evaluations have begun to turn around. Just two months later, following the stabilisation of the rand and interest rate decreases, a significant plurality of voters felt the country was going in the right direction. And while still low, more voters now give the government positive ratings in these areas.
As important, there are many areas where people award the government positive reviews. Since 1995, voters have given the government positive marks for its efforts in education and providing health care and basic services. And where voters consistently gave the government “thumbs down” for housing from 1995 to mid-1997, a majority of voters now say the government is performing well in this area.
Some levels of voter awareness of the complexities of politics and governance are also indicated by the fact that many of those who hold a pessimistic view of national trends recognise that there are other factors beside the government that determine the fate of the country.
Thus, taking all things into consideration, the electorate gives positive reviews to the job done by the government, very strong reviews to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and is positively enthusiastic about President Nelson Mandela.
Yet even if voters are pessimistic about the country’s direction, and think that the government is to blame, they would still ask themselves: can anyone else do a better job under the circumstances? Surveys clearly demonstrate that few voters feel they could trust any opposition party to represent them and govern well.
Should the size of the ANC victory eventually ebb over 60%, many South Africans will simply sigh “that is how elections go in Africa” and bemoan the fact that “black voters don’t seem to care that the country is becoming a one- party democracy”. All of this, however, will miss the point.
If it happens, a strong re-election margin for the government will be a reflection of how voters have reacted to the information at hand and the options laid in front of them. It will have been a comment on the ineptitude of the opposition, but also on the successes of the previous five years.
Robert Mattes is manager of the Public Opinion Service at Idasa. The comments expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of Idasa or the Opinion ’99 project