Great news for Gayton McKenzie

New polling suggests that the Patriotic Alliance (PA) is set to become a major player in the upcoming November local government elections.

Victory Research CEO, Gareth van Onselen, told Cape Talk that while the ANC is losing support, the PA is gaining support in many areas.

Victory Research is a respected data analysis polling company, well known for its work in South Africa’s political landscape.

The company’s latest research analysed the performance of South Africa’s political parties across by-elections in the last five years.

Researching by-elections can indicate how parties are currently performing compared to previous local elections.

When researching election trends, it is difficult to compare local and national elections because parties often approach them differently.

Van Onselen said his company’s research drew strong conclusions from analysing by-election results across the country.

He noted that the African National Congress (ANC) would likely fail to gain a majority of the vote, a trend that started in the 2021 local elections.

This election was the first time the ANC had failed to gain 50% of the country’s total votes since the end of apartheid, securing only 45.6%.

The party also lost majority control of several metro areas, leading to the formation of coalition governments in several municipalities.

Van Onselen said the ANC’s voting share would likely decline further in November, following a long-term pattern of worsening results.

“The ANC is fundamentally down on every single indicator, and it’s not a recent phenomenon. It’s a fairly steady decline that’s taken place over twenty years,” he said.

The ANC’s struggles are most evident in metro areas, where the party holds approximately 23.5% of the vote, according to by-election research.

While the ANC has lost voters, it does not appear that any other party has stepped in to form a new majority, particularly in metropolitan areas.

Van Onselen said this indicates that most of South Africa’s cities will be governed by coalitions after the upcoming elections.

The star performer by some distance

Victory Research’s data revealed one party, the PA, is poised for an impressive performance in the November elections.

The PA is a small party, mainly operating in the Western Cape with a focus on communities that feel forgotten by larger political groups.

In 2021, the PA, led by Gayton McKenzie, had a modest election performance, securing only 0.72% of the national votes.

While this performance may seem insignificant, it represented a number of key performances in specific municipalities.

The party did not run in every municipal election. Rather, it strategically chose areas to campaign in to boost its chances of success.

The party won eight seats on the Johannesburg municipal council by campaigning in specific wards that felt abandoned by larger parties.

This made the party a key part of coalition negotiations in the city, and gave it a chance to prove its governing capabilities to South Africans.

This strategic electioneering by the PA led to a growth in their voter share in 2024, reaching 2.06% in the national elections.

This rise in performance earned the party a spot in the Government of National Unity, with McKenzie becoming the Minister of Sports, Arts, and Culture.

Van Onselen predicted that the party will continue this upward trend in the upcoming elections, based on their recent performances.

“The PA’s performance has been astoundingly good, and its graphs are steeply headed in the right direction,” he said.

He said the PA would perform well in rural areas, continuing its previous strategy of serving areas not as heavily canvassed by large parties.

This will be a comfort to larger parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA), who have lost many of their historic voters to McKenzie’s party.

“It continues to grow with the Western Cape as its main source of new votes, and a substantial number of them do come at the DA’s expense,” Van Onselen said.

He noted that the DA would focus on larger areas, such as the Cape Town metro, where the PA is less likely to take votes.