Research services company Ipsos revealed in its latest 'Pulse of the People' survey, undertaken in November 2013, that the ruling party is currently less popular with eligible voters than in November 2008.

A randomly selected sample of South Africans of voting age were asked in a mock “secret ballot” which party they would support if there were an election the next day.  Results revealed that the overall support for the ruling African National Congress (ANC) fell by ten percentage points, shedding almost a fifth, or 19%, of its overall support . This was down from 63% in November 2008 to 53% in November 2013.

“Political uncertainty, leadership issues, the aftermath of the Marikana shootings, the issues about Nkandla, service delivery protests, the forming of new political parties and a host of other reasons could have contributed to this important finding,” said Ipsos communications manager Kate Slade.

Some of the new political parties, such as the Economic Freedom Fighters and Agang SA, benefitted from the support moving away from the ANC. A worrying statistic revealed that 7% of respondents indicated that they would not vote at all. A further 6% refused to answer and 5% did not know which party they would choose.

Slade notes, however, that simply looking at the views of all adults could potentially skew the picture. 

“All of those who are eligible to vote are not going to turn out to vote later this year.  In fact, only two out of every ten adults (20%) are very interested in politics and elections, while a further 43% indicated that they are somewhat interested. 

“But, more than a third (35%) of South African adults older than 18 said that they are not interested in politics and elections. [This will be] the challenge for all political parties: to turn this voter apathy around and get this group to register and to vote,” she said.

Currently, about 77% (25.589-million) of South Africans eligible to vote indicated that they are registered to vote. “This registration figure compares well to the official [Independent Electoral Commission] IEC figure of registered voters – and we need to take into account that a further registration weekend is planned for February this year.  South Africans who are living overseas can also register as voters until 7 February,” Slade stated.