Good News or Bad News? – South Africa election updates: Early results show ANC could lose majority – My Comments
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[The Liberals are very excited by this but I don't think this will be good news for Whites. If the ANC needs coalition partners I would expect it to turn to the more radical political parties. The "counting" here takes a long time, so we'll only know the results by Sunday. I wouldn't get too excited by any of this. This is politics that we Whites don't have a part in. Jan]Here’s what happened today
The first day of vote counting got under way in South Africa on Thursday after the country went to the polls a day earlier in a crucial vote for the governing ANC.
Polls officially closed at 9pm (19:00 GMT) on Wednesday, but long voter queues and delays kept many polling stations open until about 3am (01:00 GMT) on Thursday.
Vote counting began shortly after polls closed and continued throughout the day.
By 4pm (14:00 GMT), results were concluded for 22.6 percent of all voting districts, the country’s Electoral Commission said.
Just before 11pm (21:00 GMT), more than 40 percent of the vote was tallied. Counting will continue into Friday.
Jacob Zuma’s MK party gained ground in KwaZulu-Natal, and the main opposition DA took an early lead in the Western Cape. Meanwhile, the ANC struggled more than it did in previous elections.
Analysts say it is unlikely the ANC will get a 50 percent majority, which means the party will have to seek coalition partners to govern.
Final results are expected to be announced by Sunday.
Election results are seen on a screen
Journalists and party officials monitor results as they are updated in the IEC (Independent Electoral Commission) National Results Operations Centre as voting counting continues [Kim Ludbrook/EFE/EPA]
4h ago (20:40 GMT)
40 percent of the vote counted
At just after 10:30pm local time (20:30 GMT), 40 percent of the vote was counted, according to the country’s Electoral Commission.
The ANC was in the lead nationally with 42.6 percent, but early results and projections suggested it would likely lose its outright majority.
In second place was the DA with 23.8 percent, followed by the MK with 9.8 percent, and the EFF with 9.4 percent.
The ANC had so far won the most votes in all provinces besides the Western Cape – where the DA was in the lead – and KwaZulu-Natal, where the MK was making gains.
South Africa election results
4h ago (20:30 GMT)
Urban vote count may help ANC, but likely won’t be enough
Results from urban areas – traditional bastions of ANC support – could still improve the party’s prospects, but it seems all but certain that it will fall below a 50 percent outright majority.
“Big cities are the ANC’s domain historically, they’ve always done very well in the major urban centres. But what we’ve seen in the rural areas is definitely a bleeding of support. If that is repeated in the urban areas, the ANC is going to do even worse than we predict at the moment,” Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna said, reporting from the election result centre in Midrand.
“But it is a very tricky situation, because you do have a somewhat regional bias to things as well,” he added, noting that the MK has benefitted from strong results in KwaZulu-Natal, a historic hub of ANC support but also the home province of MK leader Jacob Zuma.
4h ago (20:20 GMT)
Voter turnout currently trending lower than 2019
While data on voter participation could still change as more information from urban areas comes in, South Africa’s electoral commission said late on Thursday that, so far, voter turnout is at about 58.7 percent, news outlet the Daily Maverick reported.
That is lower than the 66 percent figures from 2019 – which undermines earlier predictions from the commission that said turnout would likely exceed the previous election.
“Analysts have told Daily Maverick that the long voting queues seen countrywide on Wednesday are not necessarily an indication of high voter turnout, but may be an indication of what’s happening inside voting stations. If you take into account the reports of delayed ballots, tech glitches and three ballot papers, it’s not rational to assume the long queues were the result solely of a high voter turnout,” the outlet said.
4h ago (20:10 GMT)
Former ANC activist: Election results will be ‘sobering’ for ruling party
Former ANC activist Lawson Naidoo said the vote results will be seen as a “sobering” moment for the governing party, which has become accustomed to comfortable margins of victory in past decades.
“Current predictions show the ANC likely to come in between 40 and 45 percent of the vote, which would be a significant reduction in their support, having obtained 57 percent in the previous election,” he told Al Jazeera. “So it’s a sobering election for the African National Congress.
“It seems that the primary beneficiary of the ANC’s drop in support has been Jacob Zuma’s new MK party. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, seems to be staying relatively stable in the low 20 percents.
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