To the casual observer, the outcome of South Africa’s 2024 national and provincial elections may appear to represent new electoral trends.
Of the likely 42 million people eligible to vote, only 27.8 million registered and only 16.3 million voted.
For the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress failed to win the majority of votes needed to form a government, securing only 40.2% of the vote. We are conducting further research into the 2024 elections, but our past research already provides us with insight into which layers of the electorate are party loyal, the extent to which people switch their vote between parties, and who chooses not to vote at all.
We were interested in the extent to which “race” played a role in shaping the vote choices of the South African electorate because of the way in which race continues to shape important elements of life post-apartheid.To understand how race may or may not shape voting choices we use the term “racialised fluidity”.
This contrasts sharply with other population groups: only 27% of Indian respondents, 22% of Coloured respondents and 7% of white respondents voted for the ANC at any time during the same period. In comparison, only 32% of Black African respondents were loyal to the ANC across the same time period. A quarter of Black African respondents had never voted for the ANC between 2016 and 2021.
We found that those who chose to abstain after voting for the ANC were more likely to be younger voters.Looking across all racial groups, we found that 50.3% of our respondents had fluctuated between voting for the ANC, opposition parties or abstaining. Voter fluidity is not a new phenomenon.Two things appear to have happened. First, fewer people turned out to vote.
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