The May 8 poll made for a bruising electoral contest — for SA’s two biggest political parties, at least. The ANC’s national support dropped below 60% for the first time since 1994, and the opposition DA secured 20.77% — down from 22.2% in 2014.
For others, such as the EFF, IFP and Freedom Front Plus (FF Plus), the election was a success. The EFF increased its share of the vote to 10.8%, the IFP to 3.38% and the FF Plus to 2.38%.
But to put this in context: of the 26.8-million South Africans registered to vote, 65.99% turned out on the day. That means about 9-million registered voters decided not to vote. And that’s not counting the roughly 9-million of an estimated 35.8-million eligible voters (the voting-age population, or VAP) who did not register for the polls. In all, it makes for about 18-million uncast votes: a significant proportion when one considers the ANC’s 57% mandate hinges on 10-million votes.
It’s further evidence of a general downward trend in voter participation in SA. Turnout of registered voters in 1999 was at 89%; by 2014 that had dropped to 73.5%, and this year it was at about 66%.
More dramatic is the drop-off in participation from the broader eligible voting pool — which would seem to indicate a declining popular mandate for the country’s political parties.
Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, senior lecturer at the department of political science at Stellenbosch University, has been tracking voter trends for some years. In her edited volume Election 2014: The Campaigns, Results and Future Prospects, she shows how voter turnout as a percentage of the VAP declined from 86% in 1994 to 57% in 2014. This year, she puts it at just 49.2% (based on a VAP of 35.8-million).
That translates into real support for the ANC among eligible voters in SA of just 28%, according to Schulz-Herzenberg. By the FM’s calculations, it gives all the opposition parties combined — the 7.67-million votes they garnered — about 21% support from the broader VAP.
What’s behind the decline? Schulz-Herzenberg says it can be chalked up to decreased youth participation, declining partisanship and ANC voters staying home on voting day.
While there has been a huge injection of young people into the electorate over the years, not all of them are registered to vote, says Schulz-Herzenberg.
The numbers bear her out: Stats SA puts total eligible voters aged 18-19 at 1.8-million, but just 341,186 — 19% — registered for the election.
And the problem isn’t just registration. In line with global trends, the likelihood of youth voting is very low even if they are registered, says Schulz-Herzenberg.
This, in part, is because it is only once they reach their 30s that voters are likely to pay closer attention to policy issues. It’s also because their social networks are different and they tend to be less tied to political parties.
"The motivation to turn out and vote just isn’t there," she says. And with young people growing the electorate, "we [are] just going to see turnout [continue] to drop".
The real challenge for the country’s political parties is to get the 6-million eligible but unregistered voters under the age of 30 to participate in the 2021 local government elections, and then again in 2024.
We have the biggest group of independents and nonpartisans we have ever had
— Collette Schulz-Herzenberg
It’s not just the growing youth component that is nonpartisan. Over the past five years, there’s been a more general decline in party loyalty as older voters with deeper historical attachments to their parties leave the electorate, and others, disaffected by their parties’ performance, become less loyal.
"Unsurprisingly, in 1994 and 1999 we saw really high levels of partisanship," says Schulz-Herzenberg. "But this has started to decrease substantially over time."
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Nonpartisan voters are more willing to shift their electoral choices. This means they are often more critical and evaluate party performance in making their political choices.
But while this makes for a more rational voting base, Schulz-Herzenberg says it also makes for voters who are less likely to turn out for the polls.
"We have the biggest group of independents and nonpartisans we have ever had," she explains. "It was one of the reasons people just didn’t turn out to vote — because that partisan push to go out and support [their] party [was] just not there," she says.
The turn away from emotional attachment to political parties is also evident in the split vote: for example, the ANC received more votes in all the provinces on the national ballot than it did on the provincial ballots — an outcome that suggests strategic voting rather than blind loyalty.
But also at issue is the ANC’s declining electoral support — evident since 2009. This year, it was up to President Cyril Ramaphosa to arrest this decline — something the numbers suggest he has, on some level, been able to do.
Though the ANC was down nationally, receiving 57% of the vote against about 60% in 2014, this was up from the 53% the party received throughout SA in the 2016 local government elections.
ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte has said that the polls — especially in the wake of 2016 — were a wake-up call for the party.
Speaking after the results were tallied, she said the elections suggest that South Africans’ confidence in the ANC is returning, but that the party needs to correct its mistakes and pursue the process of renewal and rebuilding with greater effort.
It’s clear that some ANC supporters who are angry with the party have shifted their votes. But, Schulz-Herzenberg says, this is only masking a broader decline in support for the party.
"What they did was lodge their dissatisfaction by not voting," she says. "That still leaves the ANC with relatively unaffected vote shares, but its support base is a shrinking mandate."
This is most clear in the VAP breakdown. While the ANC’s 57% is not dramatically different from previous electoral showings, the mandate it has been given by the people of SA — its support among all eligible voters, by Schulz-Herzenberg’s estimate — is just 28%.
"The fact that the ANC dropped to 57% tells me that a large percentage of ANC supporters said ‘I am going to punish you by abstaining’ and a few more said ‘I am going to punish you by shifting’ and that is the growth you see in the EFF," she says.
"A large ANC support base staying at home would pull turnout down dramatically."
There was also a lower turnout in rural areas, which have historically been ANC strongholds. This, she says, was because these voters had no real alternative to the ANC; parties such as the DA and EFF lack the resources to campaign in these areas.
"The rural base has simply stayed away from the election — that is why we have lower turnout," Schulz-Herzenberg says.
Is voter turnout likely to increase? Not in the near future, she says — it will only stabilise once the population stops growing.
"In the shorter term … we are going to see turnout I think probably declining just because of the sheer number of young people coming in who are not registered and not voting — but it also depends on whether the opposition can begin to put alternatives on the table," she says.
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