Latest / Drive with John Perlman / Local Government Elections Update

Transcript

Local Government Elections Update · Drive with John Perlman

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: From the Results Operation Center.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Follow the local government elections on 702.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, earlier today we had a chat with Dr.
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: Kingsley Markopella about the implications for international affairs in general,
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: South Africa in particular, of a really consequential election, a
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: set of elections in the United States.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And Rachman.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Send me this comment. Many people are urging others to
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: focus on local elections instead of the USA upset.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Sadly, when the prices of oil shiver in the USA, we.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Get a cold. We get cold feet here. Thus, one
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: cent relief. And says, I kept it local. I think
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: we should be able to concentrate on both. Overwhelmingly, our
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: coverage today has been on our election and tomorrow while.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: I'm sure there'll be commentary on various aspects of the
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: fallout from what the Americans have decided in their poll.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: We're going to be focusing overwhelmingly on what's.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Going on here.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: But, yeah, we can walk and chew gum at the
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: same time, as the Americans would say.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: So we'll be giving you a taste of each.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: By the way, if you missed our conversation with Kingsley
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: Michael Bella, please go to primediaplus.com. He has some very,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: very interesting things to say. I think you'll enjoy listening
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: to it. You're with John Perlman on 702.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Let's try and get a sense of what we might
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: be looking out for tomorrow in terms of patterns, when
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: numbers will come in, and where are those places where
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: you're going to have to wait a little bit longer.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: And what is the turnout so far telling us? Let's
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: bring in then election analyst, a man who works with
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: the data all the time, Paul Berkovitz. A very good
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: afternoon to you. It's great to have you with us.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Great to be with you, John. Thanks for having me.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Are we learning anything yet from turnouts?
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: Often people look at patterns of voting, for example, in
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: suburbs versus voting patterns in townships and in particularly an
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: election like this, which affects the fortunes of a particular metro.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: If we think about Johannesburg or any other, they look
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: for turnouts and say, well, we can conclude A or B.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Any of that becoming clearer or is it way too early?
• 2:17
  Speaker 5: John, we actually had a few clues from the special
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: votes yesterday. And Inside Politics did some interesting stuff. They've
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: been commenting on social media. A short version of the story,
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: the turnout for special votes is somewhere between 50% and 55%.
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: And it doesn't mean that the people that didn't vote
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: yesterday and Monday don't get to vote today. But it
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: should be an indication, if we look historically, the turnout
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: for special votes... is almost always, except for 2016, has
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: been above the overall average turnout. And if that trend holds,
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: then we are looking at a ceiling for turnout probably
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: somewhere in the mid-50s.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: But possibly a bit lower.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: And to give context, 2021, especially low turnout, there is
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: the COVID factor.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: That was in the high 40%, so I think 46%,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: if I'm not mistaken. And turnout is.
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: In 2024 for a national provincial election was in the
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: mid to high 50s. So we're probably looking somewhere between there,
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: somewhere around where a lot of the.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Pollsters have had it in the low 50s, but it
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: could be lower.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: Are there political parties that particularly need and depend on
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: really getting the vote out more than others, or does
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: everybody need to get their voters out with equal urgency?
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: Everyone should get the voters out if they want to win.
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: But the ANC in particular is vulnerable if we look
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: at trends over the last five cycles. If we look
• 3:48
  Speaker 5: at areas in Soweto, Alex, turnout and the percent that
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: the parties won the awards with has fallen from mid-80s,
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: in some cases, 50 percentage points.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: There's some awards that are being won in the mid-30s.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: So I think.
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  Speaker 5: The ANC in particular, in particular in the metros, in
• 4:07
  Speaker 5: particular in Gauteng, would need to get the vote out.
• 4:10
  Speaker 5: And a low turnout would probably hurt the party.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Is that because there are people, is that a reflection
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: of a perhaps incomplete political choice by disillusioned ANC supporters
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: who are not so disillusioned that they're going to go
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: out and, for the sake of argument, I'll just start
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: with the letter A, vote Action SA, or ATM for
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: that matter, since we're staying with the first letter of
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: the alphabet.
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  Speaker 1: But they're staying away.
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  Speaker 3: So the ANC don't get that vote, but they're not
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: yet ready to say, well, I'm going to go there
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  Speaker 3: anyway to vote for somebody else. Do you think a
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: lot of ANC voters between 21 and now or even
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: 24 and now may well have crossed that line?
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: And even in some areas going back to 2016, John,
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: I think that's the working hypothesis. And it's all about
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: turnout and differential turnout, particularly for the DA at the
• 5:01
  Speaker 5: end of the day. that if you look at the
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: absolute number of votes in traditional ANC strongholds across Johannesburg
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  Speaker 5: or Twine or Kuruleni, you have to look at the
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: absolute number of votes. And if there are however many
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: hundred ANC voters staying away and not voting for someone else,
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: then the share of a shrinking pie for Action SA
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: or for the EFF, which are the two bodies that
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: in 2021 normally came second and third across Soweto and Alex,
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: their shares start to look bigger.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: I'm interested just in the term you use, vote differential,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: because we're going to be using a lot of terminology tomorrow.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: What does that refer to and why does it matter?
• 5:39
  Speaker 5: Okay, so, John, we'll go back to a quick drive-by
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  Speaker 5: tour of our proportional representation system. At the end of
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: the day, it's the absolute number of votes that a
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: party gets. More or less, conditions and terms apply. that
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: is directly relevant and proportional to the number of seats
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  Speaker 5: they get. A good example in 2016, and it's a
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: great one of differential turnout, if we look at Nelson
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: Mandela Bay, there were 60 wards, the ANC won 35,
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  Speaker 5: the DA won 25. But the DA ended up with
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: almost 47% of the vote at that time because they
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: were winning their wards in greater and greater.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Numbers with 70, 80% of the registered voters winning. And
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  Speaker 2: the ANC were winning with a far smaller ship.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: So, tomorrow, when do we start getting an idea of
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: what's going on? And... Because the battle is not over
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: large entities like provinces, I was just thinking, looking across
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: a substantial distance at the results board, national and provincial
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: is pretty simple. There's nine provinces, plus there's the national picture. Here,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they're going to do it on
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: the screens, but it's a lot more complicated. So I
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: get that what's happening, for example, in Cape Town is
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: not going to be representative necessarily, even of what's necessarily
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: going to happen in George, although perhaps it is more
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: analogous with that than what's going to happen in Bloemfontein.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: But in general, when do we start getting clues that
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: become trends?
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: Historically, John, sometime by tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow evening.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Friday morning at the latest, we should start to have.
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: All the pieces in place, the shares of the votes
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: of the parties across the various municipalities. It might take
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: longer this time. I mean, we may be in uncharted territory.
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: We might have a few challenges to ward seats if
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: it comes down to a few votes. We know in 2021,
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: because the vote was so fractured and split in some places...
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: Some awards were won with less than 30% of the vote.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: And if it comes down to that and we have recounts,
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: we might not know the total number of allocated seats
• 8:03
  Speaker 5: until later on Friday.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: And just some numbers to finish off the point that
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Paul has just made. In the year 2000, 87 parties
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: contested the local government elections.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: This year, in 2026, it's 529.
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  Speaker 3: And in Johannesburg alone... 75 parties are battling for a
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: share of the votes and the voting pie. In Tawane,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: it's 70 parties. In Ikura Leni, slightly less, 69.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Paul Berkovitz, many, many thanks.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Lots of insights shared with us, and it makes us
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: the wiser. But the count is yet to begin.