South Africa’s general elections five days away – here are the latest pollsters results

SOUTH AFRICA - Report 03 May 2019 by Iraj Abedian

The South African economy has had difficulty recovering from its lackluster growth for a decade, and leadership (governance) and policies have played a significant role in this. The direction the economy will take from here largely depends on the outcome of the general elections that are less than a week away (May 8th). It is generally the consensus that ANC (African National Congress) will get the majority of votes, but it is the margin of this win that has grave political and economic consequences. The performance of the other two main opposition parties, the DA (Democratic Alliance) and EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) will also determine how much of an influence they have on governance and policies.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s (also ANC President) power within his own party, and therefore his ability to enact policies as the President of the country, will be impacted by how much of the national vote the ANC gets come Wednesday the coming week. As we indicated in our previous polls report (Mar. 28th), the ANC had received 62.15% of votes, while the DA and the EFF had received 22.23% and 6.35% of votes, respectively during the 2014 general elections. The poll results in our previous report also indicated the ANC losing some ground, while the new comer, the EFF, appears to have been making significant gains. In this report, we are looking at the latest election opinion polls conducted by IPSOS and the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). 26,774,102 South Africans are registered to vote.

IPSOS’ latest elections survey results from its “pulse of the people” studies were released at the beginning of this week. The survey was conducted between Mar. 22nd and Apr. 17th 2019, and since this is an elections poll, the results indicate how those surveyed would have voted had elections taken place in the period 22nd March to 17th April. Again, the survey participants were selected randomly from all over the country. The 3,600 participants were then filtered by those 18 years and older and registered to vote. The margin of error for this sample was between 0.9% and 2%. The poll also considers different voter turnout scenarios as these would have differing implications in terms of party vote.

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