This is a paid article which your subscription is allowing you to read.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has emerged from South Africa’s 2026 local government elections as the country’s only truly multiracial major political party, drawing significant support from black, coloured, Indian, and white voters.

The findings come from Gareth van Onselen, a veteran political analyst, who has applied a demographic model to the final election results and published the findings on his Inside Politics platform. The model uses the population composition of registered voters across voting districts, adjusted for turnout and other factors, to estimate how different population groups voted. It reveals a striking divide between the DA and South Africa’s other major political parties. While the DA draws its support from across the country’s racial communities, the African National Congress (ANC), uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and ActionSA are essentially monoracial in their composition.

The scale of the difference is remarkable. Of the DA’s 3.64 million votes, an estimated 25.2% came from black voters, 19.0% from coloured voters, 7.2% from Indian and Asian voters, and 48.6% from white voters. In absolute terms, that translates into approximately 916 000 black votes, 692 000 coloured votes, 262 000 Indian and Asian votes, and 1.77 million white votes. No other major South African political party comes close to achieving such a spread of electoral support across the country’s population groups.

The contrast with the ANC is particularly revealing. Of the ANC’s 4.57 million votes, an estimated 95.8% came from black voters, while coloured voters accounted for 3.3%, Indian and Asian voters 0.3%, and white voters effectively none. The MKP is even more racially concentrated, with 98.7% of its 1.44 million votes coming from black voters. The EFF received 95.3% of its support from black voters, while ActionSA received 89.5%. In other words, four of the five largest parties draw approximately nine-tenths or more of their support from a single race group.

The data are set out on the chart below.

For decades, the ANC presented itself as the natural political home of black South Africans, while opposition parties struggled to build significant support outside minority communities. The new figures suggest that the DA has broken through that barrier to a degree that its competitors have not managed to replicate in the opposite direction. The DA now draws close to one million votes from black South Africans, making it the third-largest party among black voters nationally, ahead of the EFF and ActionSA.

Of the estimated black votes cast for these five parties, the ANC secured 52.2%, followed by the MKP on 16.9%, the DA on 10.9%, the EFF on 10.5%, and ActionSA on 9.5%.

That the DA has moved ahead of the EFF among black voters is one of the more consequential findings of the election. It means that the party that has often been characterised as representing the interests of racial minorities now attracts more black voters than a party whose political identity and programme have been built almost entirely around black economic and political mobilisation.

Among minority voters, Van Onselen estimates that the DA secured 50.4% of the coloured vote, 67.8% of the Indian and Asian vote, and 81.5% of the white vote. The party has therefore combined dominant support among minority communities with a growing foothold in the much larger black electorate, an electoral combination that no other major party has succeeded in assembling.

ActionSA’s performance provides an important comparison. The party secured approximately 796 000 black votes, a substantial constituency that places it among the country’s largest parties in that population group. But unlike the DA, its support has become increasingly concentrated among black voters. An estimated 9.4% of ActionSA’s votes came from white voters. Van Onselen notes that ActionSA’s white support has more than halved since 2021. Its growth among black voters has therefore been accompanied by a narrowing, rather than a broadening, of its racial support base.