An opinion poll published by market research company Ipsos shows waning electoral support for the ANC and opposition parties ahead of the 2024 national election.
The poll, published on Monday, shows that if elections were held tomorrow, the ANC would get 42% of the vote, the DA 11%, the EFF 9% and ActionSA 3% at the national level.
Ipsos stressed that the poll of close to 3,400 respondents is not a prediction but rather a gauge of political sentiment. Not all participants were registered voters and researchers filtered out the opinions of younger respondents (under 18) who are ineligible to vote.
Analyst Dawie Scholtz said that while the poll found support for the ANC may dip below 50% in the national vote, “taking the poll at face value may not be helpful” because it does not account for undecided voters. Furthermore, ActionSA, which was formed in 2020, is still building its national structures and its support base may well increase by 2024.
“I don’t think it’s a useful poll to predict an outcome,” Scholtz said. “If you look at the poll, it only adds up to 70% of the voters [who are eligible to vote] and a huge part is made up of people who are not registered to vote or are not going to vote ... there is still another 30% that is not accounted for.”
The DA too questioned the poll, which shows a significant decline in the opposition party’s electoral support.
DA federal council chairperson Helen Zille said the party’s internal polls differed by less than 1% from the actual support that the major parties received. “We trust our own numbers and several other independent polls that corroborate our numbers, as they have in recent weeks. The DA’s polling currently is as strong as it has ever been.”
Still, the poll does provide an early indication of the sentiment of South Africans ahead of national elections in 2024. Support for the ANC slipped below 50% of the vote for the first time in 2021’s municipal elections and the Ipsos poll suggests a further decline for the party that has been at the helm of government since the dawn of democracy.
Various ANC leaders, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, have warned that the party could lose further support should it not improve governance and clean up its image in the wake of alleged corruption and state capture involving some of its senior leaders.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont said the poll should be taken with a pinch of salt as it does not account for voter turnout, which usually affects the overall result.
“Polls that are conducted in 2022 are not indicative of where we stand when we get to August in 2024. There are many places where ActionSA is a relatively new concept to voters,” he said.
Ipsos sought opinions on six political parties (the ANC, DA, EFF, ActionSA, IFP and Freedom Front Plus), and how many would definitely vote for them. For the ANC the figure was only 25%. According to the results, potential support for the ANC is five percentage points lower than the 42% achieved on the ballot paper, showing that some voters support the party only because they do not see any other option, said Mari Harris, knowledge director of Ipsos Sub-Saharan Africa.
“As an opposition political party, you need to prove you are a credible alternative without complaining about everything the government does or does not do. Provide voters with other workable alternatives and be another option. A political party needs to be a positive force — this attracts support,” Harris said.
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