Howard Barrell
The African National Congress has gained significant voter support in recent months, edging it closer to a two-thirds majority in elections in five weeks’ time. The ANC also looks set to control provincial legislatures or governments in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces – in all but the Western Cape.
These are the main pointers in an opinion poll by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) and Markinor for the SABC, published on Thursday. The Idasa-Markinor polls are considered by many observers to be technically superior to others undertaken recently.
The poll found that 59% of potential voters would vote for the ANC. This indicates a clear trend increase in support for the ANC. Support now for the ANC is five percentage points up on what it was five months ago and eight percentage points up on the figure for seven months ago.
The poll also shows that the lower the percentage poll on election day, the closer the ANC will get to winning a two-thirds majority. On a moderate voter turnout of, say 82%, the ANC should win 65% of the vote, just two percentage points short of the two-thirds threshold. On a low turnout of, say, 63% the ANC will break through the two-thirds barrier.
Some 63% of those interviewed said they were highly likely to vote, while a further 19% indicated they were likely to vote.
There may, however, be two reasons to believe the ANC will find it easier to achieve a two-thirds majority than is directly indicated by this latest poll.
First, a proportion of the 17% of potential voters who are undecided are likely to vote for the ANC, so increasing its proportion of the vote by a few percentage points. Second, observers point out that the Idasa-Markinor poll does not distinguish between those potential voters who are on the new voters’ roll and those who are not.
On the assumption that opposition supporters have been more lax than ANC supporters in obtaining bar-coded ID documents and registering as voters, these observers argue that this latest poll may overestimate support for opposition parties and underestimate backing for the ANC that will be forthcoming on the day of the election.
What will particularly encourage the ANC is the increase in its support among black people, its bedrock constituency. Its black backing is up nine percentage points on the 67% black support it scored back in September last year. This is underscored by a similar, deeper trend among black voters. The poll shows that the number of black voters who “identify with” the ANC has also climbed sharply since November to 59% from 50%.
The ANC will also welcome an increase in support among coloureds nationally – to 26% from 20% seven months ago.
The New National Party’s trend decline continues, with only 8% of potential voters now supporting it, against 10%seven months ago.
The Democratic Party has stabilised at about 6% support among potential voters nationally. It now has a foothold among coloured and Indian voters, although it remains dependent on white support, and has made sharp gains in the Western Cape.
United Democratic Movement leaders will be disappointed to see that they have not managed to maintain, let alone build on, their party’s early promise. Their support among potential voters is down to about 2%from 5% a year ago. The UDM looks unlikely to get more than 7%of the vote in the Eastern Cape, its main support base.
The Inkatha Freedom Party is holding up with 4% support among potential voters, although it has slipped well behind the ANC in the race to be the biggest single party in KwaZulu-Natal.
And red lights are flashing for the Pan Africanist Congress and the Freedom Front, for which support appears to have halved over the past year, down to 1% in each case.