Political Realignment in Metros Bodes Ill for ANC

Last week The Common Sense released an analysis looking at voting patterns within the three richest provinces in South Africa – KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and the Western Cape.

Our analysis found that if the three provinces were a single polity, the Democratic Alliance (DA) would be the biggest party within that polity.

But how would things look if we did the same analysis with South Africa’s biggest cities? What if South Africa’s eight metros were a coherent political entity? What would voting patterns look like then?

The metros matter because they concentrate economic power. These urban centres account for roughly 55% of national economic output, about 52% of all jobs, with only 40% of the population.

In other words, the metros are where most value is created. What happens in urban centres also acts as a leading indicator for what could happen in the rest of the country. What happens in South Africa’s cities today could predict what will happen in the country as a whole tomorrow.

When the 2024 national election results are aggregated across the metros only, a striking political picture emerges.

Among the four largest parties, the DA secured 31.0% of the metro vote, narrowly ahead of the African National Congress (ANC) on 30.9%. In raw vote terms, the DA attracted 2 126 024 metro votes, compared with the ANC’s 2 120 505. The Economic Freedom Fighters followed well behind on 9.9% with 677 451 votes, while the uMkhonto weSizwe Party registered 14.7% with 1 007 917 votes.

Taken together, this means that the ANC is no longer the biggest party in the parts of the country that generate the majority of economic output and employment. The metros, viewed as a single political unit, have already tipped away from ANC dominance. The DA now leads, however narrowly, in the country’s economic heartland.

This is not a trivial statistical curiosity. It points to a structural political shift underway in South Africa. The ANC continues to dominate in poorer, more rural provinces, but its grip weakens markedly in dense urban economies where voters are more exposed to service delivery failures, infrastructure breakdown, crime, and stagnant job creation. Metro voters appear to be voting less on historical loyalty and more on performance.

If South Africa’s future growth and fiscal sustainability depend disproportionately on its metropolitan economies, then the political preferences of those metros carry increasing weight. The 2024 results suggest that, economically speaking, the country’s most productive regions are already moving into a post-ANC political era.

In addition, the voting results above are from a national election. The DA tends to perform better in local government elections (LGEs) than national elections and the ANC worse, relatively speaking. The next LGE must be held within the next twelve months, and if the historic patterns holds – where the DA’s LGE performance is better than its performance in national elections – then it could extend its lead over the ANC in the country’s metros even further.