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Cape Town remains the most important electoral stronghold for the Democratic Alliance (DA). It is the largest municipality in South Africa governed by a party with an outright majority and has become central to the DA’s argument that it can govern the country’s other major cities more effectively than the African National Congress (ANC). Yet the history of the party’s electoral performance in Cape Town raises an important question about whether its majority is as secure as it once appeared. With the local government elections approaching on 4 November, the DA faces the possibility that a further erosion of its support could leave it dependent on coalition partners for the first time in 15 years.

That history, since 2000, is set out on the chart below:

The DAs electoral history in Cape Town begins in 2000, when it won 53.0% of the vote and secured 107 of the 200 council seats. In the 2006 local elections, however, its support fell to 41.9%, giving it just 90 of the 210 seats. That decline was driven in part by the emergence of Patricia de Lilles Independent Democrats (ID), founded in 2003, which won 10.8% of the vote by attracting voters who might otherwise have supported the DA or other smaller parties. The effect was to fragment the non-ANC vote and deprive the DA of an outright majority. Helen Zille nevertheless assembled a multiparty coalition that brought the DA into government.

In 2011, following the absorption of the ID, the DA secured 61.2% of the vote and 135 of the 221 council seats, giving it a substantial outright majority. Five years later, in 2016, the party increased its support to 66.6%, winning 154 of the 231 council seats and reaching the high-water mark of its electoral dominance in Cape Town. A reversal came in 2021, when the DA’s share of the vote fell to 58.2%, a decline of 8.4 percentage points, although it retained 135 of the 231 seats and therefore a comfortable governing majority.

That looks fine, but there is some evidence that the DA itself is concerned. Party insiders have told The Common Sense that internal polling in Cape Town has at times placed the party’s support in the low 50.0% range during 2026. The Social Research Foundation this month had the party on 52.0% in the province on a wide margin of error. Although such figures would still be sufficient to secure a majority of votes, they suggest that the DA’s electoral position is considerably less comfortable than the 2021 result implies. A relatively modest further movement away from the party, particularly if accompanied by lower turnout among its traditional supporters, could threaten its outright majority.

One of the principal threats comes from smaller parties competing for support among coloured voters, who have historically constituted an important part of the DA’s electoral base. The Patriotic Alliance (PA) won 1.4% of the vote in Cape Town in 2021 but increased its support to 4.1% in the city in the 2024 national election. The National Coloured Congress (NCC) has also demonstrated an ability to attract support in traditionally DA communities. In some by-elections, for what these are worth, the PA increased its 2021 vote share almost ten-fold, while the NCC has risen too.

What is driving this shift? If that is the beginning of a trend, it means that coloured nationalism could come to deny the DA a future Cape Town or Western Cape majority. In as far as this fragmentation of the coloured vote is an extension of the broader fragmentation of South Africa’s national politics, such a result would not be out of keeping with the broader thrust of South African politics.

The historical parallel with 2006 is significant. In that election, the emergence of the ID fragmented the opposition electorate and contributed to the DA losing out on an outright majority. Its subsequent absorption helped the DA consolidate its support and secure the large majorities of 2011 and 2016. The emergence of the PA and NCC presents a potentially similar challenge today, although neither has yet demonstrated the citywide strength achieved by the ID in 2006. If these parties can expand their support in coloured communities, the cumulative effect could be sufficient to threaten the DA's majority.

The significance of the outcome extends well beyond Cape Town itself. For the DA, the city has become the principal demonstration of its approach to government, built around administrative competence, continuity of leadership, and comparatively effective service delivery. The party has repeatedly pointed to Cape Town as evidence of what it could achieve in other major South African cities, many of which have experienced unstable coalition arrangements and deteriorating municipal services. Losing its outright majority in the city, even while remaining the largest party, would introduce coalition negotiations into a municipality governed by a single party since 2011 and carry consequences for the DA’s national political standing.