Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Ryan Coetzee, a long-time party adviser with a history of on-and-off involvement with the Democratic Alliance (DA), and who privately advises factions of that party, called The Common Sense’s recent poll report on Geordin Hill-Lewis “complete and utter nonsense”.

The Common Sense data, produced in conjunction with South Africa’s Social Research Foundation, showed that only 13% of voters view Hill-Lewis favourably, while 15% hold an unfavourable view.

The more concerning statistic, however, was that 59% of voters reported being too unfamiliar with him to have an opinion. This unfamiliarity spans across all demographics, raising doubts about his broad appeal and his ability to grow the DA.

In his exchange with a News24 staffer, Coetzee made the fake news statement, “No one, on becoming leader, has high name recognition.” That statement is palpably false, as even the most cursory look at modern political leaders (and potential leaders) from Donald Trump to Volodymyr Zelensky to Patrice Motsepe will reveal.

On Motsepe, for example, The Common Sense will next week report a favourability figure almost three times higher than that of Hill-Lewis.

Breaking down the data by demographics revealed even more concerning figures for those DA figures backing Hill-Lewis to grow the party:

• •66% of black voters are unfamiliar with Hill-Lewis;
• •48% of coloured voters share the same sentiment;
• •70% of Indian voters remain unaware of him; and
• •30% of white voters are similarly unfamiliar.

The Common Sense found that among African National Congress (ANC) voters, a staggering 67% have no opinion of Hill-Lewis, while even within the DA, 45% of voters report being too unfamiliar with him to form a view.

Coetzee, however, described Hill-Lewis’s favourability numbers as “remarkably high”, despite The Common Sense showing that they lag very far behind those of John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille.

Taking a personal jibe, Coetzee went on to say that The Common Sense staff have “no experience of politics”. Coetzee has an extensive political career that, beyond early DA campaigns, included work on the 2015 Liberal Democrat campaign in the United Kingdom, the campaign to prevent Brexit, as well as work in the non-Western world.

That kind of sensitivity over Hill-Lewis’s viability as the DA’s leader reveals a significant divide in South African political thinking.

Cape Town is often heralded as a beacon of success, a city that embodies what South Africa could look like if properly managed. That is certainly, at least in great part, how The Common Sense regards what Hill-Lewis has achieved in Cape Town, and it has written at length on this. The Common Sense has also held that elite enclaves are essential redundancies necessary to ensure South Africa’s long-term success.

But for many South Africans, Cape Town’s success story represents a world apart from the harsh realities faced by millions in the country’s poorer regions, a deep disconnect from the day-to-day struggles of the working class.

Any person who has taken the trip from the Cape Town airport to the amazing city centre saw that divide pass before their eyes in under 20 minutes. Some of the worst poverty in the world is stacked against the most splendorous luxury to be found anywhere on earth.

The hard fact of the matter is that while what Cape Town represents is, for some, a narrative of hope and possibility, it is, for others, a symbol of elite privilege that risks alienating the very voters the DA is seeking to win over. As the 2026 and 2029 elections draw closer, these internal battles within the DA, fuelled by party factions, will continue to strike a nerve precisely because they expose the DA's struggle to bridge the gap that the trip from the Cape Town airport still represents in the minds of so many millions of South Africa’s people. 

*The Social Research Foundation Q1 2026 Market Survey was commissioned by the Social Research Foundation supported by The Common Sense and conducted by Victory Research using a nationally representative telephonic CATI survey of registered voters (N=2 222), with metro samples upsized to over 500 respondents each in Johannesburg (n=503), Tshwane (n=510), and eThekwini (n=503). Fieldwork was conducted between 16 February 2026 and 6 March 2026 using a single-frame random digit dialling sampling design that draws from all possible South African mobile numbers, ensuring equal probability of selection and near-universal coverage given SIM penetration above 250%, more than 90% adult phone ownership, and mobile network coverage of 99.8% of the population. Respondents were screened to include registered voters only, and turnout modelling assigned each respondent a probability of voting based on likelihood indicators, with the primary model assuming turnout of 56.0%. Data were weighted to ensure the national sample reflects the demographic profile of the registered voter population across language, age, race, gender, location (urban/rural), education, and income, while metro samples were weighted to the demographic composition of voters in each metro. Results are reported at a 95% confidence level with a design effect (DEFF) of 1.762, producing margins of error of 2.1% nationally and 4.4% for each metro sample.