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In an op-ed written for The Common Sense by Jordan Griffiths on these pages yesterday he suggested that up to 100 municipalities could be hung (where no party wins a majority) after the local government elections (LGEs), due to be held in November. There are two pivotal data points showing why he is right. The first is that the African National Congress (ANC) vote share has fallen to a record low. The second is that there is no traditional constituency in which the party is polling at over 50%.

The chart below shows support for the ANC set against the number of hung councils after each local government election since 2000. The data for 2026 are based on polling from The Common Sense, in conjunction with the Social Research Foundation, with the number of hung councils for 2026 being an estimate based on that polling.

Under the swing implied by the ANC’s slide to around 34% support – down from the 46% it won in 2021 – South Africa is on course for by far the largest crop of hung municipalities the country has seen. In 2021, a national ANC vote of 46% left 66 of the country’s 213 councils hung, more than double the 27 that resulted from the party’s 54% showing in 2016. With the party now polling around 34%, substantially more municipalities are likely to cross below the 50% threshold. On a broad extrapolation from the 2021 result, somewhere around 100 to 130 councils could consequently be hung after November.

The chart below shows the proportion of municipalities that were hung after each of the LGEs – 2026 is again a projection.

The number and proportion of hung councils declined between 2011 and 2016, despite the ANC’s declining share of the vote, because municipal mergers reduced the number of councils, with some smaller, marginal (for the ANC) councils being swallowed up by larger, safer councils. In addition, in 2016 the ANC’s losses were concentrated heavily in big metros rather than spread evenly nationwide.

The explosion in hung councils in 2021 was a function of the ANC’s vote share slipping to below 50% and that slippage was happening in constituencies beyond the big metros. That fall in support for traditional stronghold constituencies has today reached a point where there is no traditional ANC constituency left where more than 50% of people support the ANC. The traditionally ANC constituencies include: black voters, township voters, rural voters, and the poorest voters.

The chart below shows those numbers along with ANC support in the suburban middle classes, as well as support in these constituencies for the Democratic Alliance (DA), the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), and the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP).

The data, especially in the chart above, show the fact that South Africa is now firmly a coalition country. It is governed nationally by a coalition and after the November election more than half of its municipalities will be governed by coalitions.