ANC Polling Falls Below One Third Ahead of South Africa Vote

Pre-election polling found South Africa's African National Congress on track to win less than a third of the vote in Wednesday's municipal elections, a decline the party's leadership has not disputed, according to reporting by the Guardian from Johannesburg.

How does the projected support compare with past results?

The comparison is straightforward even if the final count is not yet in. The ANC won 45.6% of the vote in the last municipal elections in 2021 and 40.2% in the 2024 national elections, the Guardian reported. Polling ahead of Wednesday's vote put support below 30%, a drop of roughly 16 percentage points from the 2021 municipal baseline if the polling holds. The party is still expected to remain the single largest nationally, but the margin over its nearest rivals has narrowed with each election cycle since 2021.

What is driving the decline, and how reliable is that explanation?

The Guardian's reporting ties the slide to "deep discontent over water outages, power cuts and crumbling infrastructure," conditions described as recurring in parts of Johannesburg in recent weeks. That is a qualitative account from on-the-ground reporting, not a survey of causes, so it should be read as context rather than a measured driver with an isolated effect size. No published study or exit-poll breakdown in the available reporting quantifies how much of the vote shift traces to infrastructure complaints versus other factors, such as competition from newer parties.

Could the ANC still end up running city governments despite the lower vote share?

Yes, and this is where the uncertainty is largest. The Guardian noted that "vote fragmentation means the ANC could still end up leading many city coalition governments while losing control of others." Johannesburg itself illustrates the pattern: the city is currently governed by ANC mayor Dada Morero in coalition with the Economic Freedom Fighters and the Patriotic Alliance, a three-way arrangement spanning the left and right. A national vote share near or below 30% would likely force similar multi-party bargaining in other municipalities, with outcomes that depend on local seat counts rather than the topline national number.

What should readers watch for in the final results?

The published figures available before polls closed were survey estimates, not certified results, and South African election authorities have not yet released official counts in the material reviewed for this report. Readers should treat the sub-30% figure as a pre-election projection subject to the same polling error that affects any survey, and watch for the certified municipal-level results and subsequent coalition negotiations, which the Guardian flagged as likely to be contested and potentially unstable given the number of parties involved.

The full account, including voter interviews gathered in Johannesburg's Kensington suburb, is available from the Guardian.

Quotags is A quote-card app first shipped in 2013. Version 2.0 is returning soon — do not install an old binary.