Election

With the next national election planned for May this year, voters are making up their minds about which party to support. However, uncertainty is rife - many people are not sure which party to vote for, giving political parties the opportunity to try and influence voters before the election comes around.

Despite all the political turmoil, posturing, faction fights and uncertainty that was a feature of the South African political scene over the last year, the ANC is currently comfortably ahead in the race to next year’s general election.

According to indications, ANC support in South Africa is shrinking: In the General Election in 2014, the ANC won 62% of the votes and in the Local Government Elections (2016), 54% of votes were cast for the party.

Aside from the metropolitan area of Cape Town and Buffalo City, South Africans have seen a marked improvement in the performance of local government.

Currently a third (33%) of registered voters agree (either "strongly agree" or "agree") with the statement "I will seriously consider not voting in the 2016 municipal elections because I am unhappy with service delivery".

In addition, less than half (44%) says "Overall, I trust government to deliver effective services to the public". These are two of the most interesting findings of the pre-election Pulse of the People™ study conducted by Ipsos in June and July this year.

With the Local Government Elections coming up on 3rd August, all political parties want to make the best of the remaining seven weeks to rally more support. With young people making up a good deal of new votes, it is valuable to know how they think and feel about politics, political parties, and local issues.

From 29 March 2016 to 11 May 2016, Ipsos conducted 3,786 face-to-face interviews in the homes and home languages of randomly chosen respondents, representative of South Africans 15 years and older. Of these 912 were in the 15 to 24 age group.