DA and ANC Neck-and-Neck in Metros as Turnout Slumps

The next local government elections, due within the next 12 months, will be South Africa’s most fiercely contested municipal polls yet. A record number of councils were hung (meaning no party won a majority) after the last election, and that figure is likely to rise in the upcoming election.

After the 2016 local government elections there had been fewer than 30 hung councils, but this more than doubled to 66 in the 2021 poll. And the number of hung councils will only increase as South Africa’s politics continues to fracture.

A key battleground in the next municipal poll will be the country’s eight metros. Together they generate nearly 60% of economic output, house roughly 45% of the population, and carry a disproportionate share of employment. And governing a major metro such as Johannesburg or Cape Town arguably carries more direct influence over daily life and has more power than being a provincial premier.

In addition, what happens in the metros often acts as a leading indicator for national political trends. In other words, trends reflected in the metros will likely be national trends a few years later.

Across these eight metros, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is now on the brink of overtaking the African National Congress (ANC). In the 2011 local elections the ANC led the DA by 18 points, winning 54.0% of the aggregated metro vote to the DA’s 36.6%. By 2016 the gap had narrowed sharply, with the ANC on 43.4% and the DA on 41.5%. In 2021 it closed to less than a single point, but this was amid significant drops in support for the both the ANC and the DA. In 2021 across the metros the ANC won 34.9% and the DA 34.3%.

No other party exceeded 10% across the metros in 2021, reflecting how fractured South Africa's voting patterns have become. The only parties that won more than 5% of the aggregated metro vote in that year were the Economic Freedom Fighters, who secured 9.6%, and ActionSA, which won 5.8%, despite contesting only four metros.

But more worrying for all parties is declining turnout. Although declining voter turnout is a global trend in the world’s democracies, it is something that South Africa’s political parties will especially be concerned about, especially given the scale of the decline. About five million people voted across the metros in 2011, rising to six million in 2016, before dropping to roughly 4.5 million in 2021. Overall turnout for all eligible voters (i.e., all South Africans over the age of 18) in the local election was also low, at only 30%. Although Covid-19 may have dampened participation, the broader trend is clearly downward.

It is also not a trend that only affects local elections. Only 39% of eligible voters turned out in the national election in 2024, down from 57% in the 2004 election.

If the metros represent the country in miniature, then South Africa stands at a political tipping point. The gap between the ANC and DA is now almost non-existent, but the real wildcard is not which party leads, it is whether voters show up at all.