2026 Election Results: The numbers are coming in from across South Africa
The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) said that vote counting and verification continue across the country and that the numbers are coming in.
The IEC Results Leaderboard inside the national Results Operations Centre (ROC) at the Gallagher Convention Centre went live last night.
Shortly after midnight on 5 November 2026, the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC), Mosotho Moepya, unveiled the first result.
Since then, the results have been coming in from across the country, with the African National Congress taking an early lead in the national vote.
At 06:30 on Thursday morning, the ANC had 32% of the vote, followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) at 31% and the MK Party at 5%.
However, the value of these early results is limited, as only 14% of the votes have been counted.
There are many districts where none of the votes has been reported yet, and they will only come in later.
Only a small proportion of districts have reported in populous Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, home to some of the country’s biggest cities.
Although the early tally was not yet representative of the national vote, it did show a lower performance for the ANC than in previous elections.
This was expected. Most experts predicted that the ANC would lose ground as voters punished it for high crime rates, corruption, and failing to deliver basic services.
The biggest battlegrounds are South Africa’s main cities, where the ANC is expected to lose significant support.
With no other party large enough to take its place, many cities in South Africa are heading for coalition governments.
“I have seen the challenges that we face at local government level, but we are determined to rebuild our local government structure,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
Newsday election results portal
To make it easy for South Africans to follow the 2026 local government election results, Newsday has built a dedicated election results portal.
The portal offers all election data since 1999, making it easy for visitors to track changes in support for different political parties.
The election results include those for municipalities, provincial legislatures, and the national assembly.
Using the interactive map, users can zoom in on a local government region to view results for that municipality.
The portal will be updated in real time to keep visitors up to date with the latest results from South Africa’s 2026 local government elections.
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