ANALYSIS | New turnout trend in 2026 elections spells more trouble for ANC - News24

The data from previous local government elections showed that a higher turnout was bad news for the ANC in the metros. This remains true. But now, there is a new dimension to the results, and the news for the ANC is even worse.

Nationally, the Electoral Commission of South Africa declared a 52% turnout – up 6.1 percentage points from the 45.9% it recorded in 2021.

The 2021 turnout was the lowest for a local government election. The high point was 2016, at 57.7%, when the electoral outcome also saw a major shift: the ANC’s grip on the metros other than Cape Town was weakened for the first time.

The eight metros tracked slightly above the national figure this year, averaging 53.3%, and, as has been widely reported by now, the ANC bled support across all the metros, to the extent that, for the first time, it does not hold an outright majority in a single metro.

In previous elections, the battle in the metros at the ward level was mostly between the ANC and the DA. In 2021, the wards won by the DA had, on average, an 11.7 percentage point higher turnout than wards won by the ANC.

And when the DA lost wards to the ANC in 2021, turnout in these wards dropped compared to 2016, reinforcing the notion that high turnout favours the DA.

READ | Where did the ANC’s votes go? Here are the parties, places, and numbers

Turnout thus played an important role in the battle between the ANC and DA. And both parties know it.

When the campaign trail took ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula to the Eastern Cape a week before the elections, he told a rally at Zwelitsha, Qonce: “White people might not be attending rallies, but they come out in numbers during the voting day.

“Please do not stay in the house during the voting day, because the enemy wants to destroy the ANC.”

One can safely assume Mbalula meant opposition voters, or more specifically DA voters, when he referred to “white people”.

The pattern of flipped wards having higher turnout held across South Africa’s eight metros. Altogether 172 wards changed hands in 2026. The ANC lost 161 of them. In all but two of the 172 wards, turnout was higher than five years before – on average by 11 percentage points.

However, a new pattern emerged in these elections.

In the previous two cycles, when the ANC lost wards, the DA took more than four in five of them. In 2026, the DA took fewer than one in seven. The ANC lost eight times as many wards, but the DA got roughly the same number as before, with 23. The rest went to the MK Party, with 71, and ActionSA, with 52.

The battle of the metro wards is thus no longer between the ANC and the DA; the MK Party and ActionSA are very much in the fight.

There is a regional aspect to this, with ActionSA a factor in Gauteng, and MK Party in eThekwini.

In the three Gauteng metros, the pattern was consistent. Turnout rose by roughly 10 percentage points in each: Johannesburg from 42% to 52%, Ekurhuleni from 43% to 53%, Tshwane from 45% to 54%.

ActionSA won 53 wards across the three, all but one from the ANC: 26 in Tshwane, 17 in Ekurhuleni, 10 in Johannesburg. In every one of those wards, turnout was higher than in 2021, by an average of 12 points.

The DA gained too, but more modestly. It picked up six wards from the ANC in Johannesburg and two in Ekurhuleni. It also regained wards 17 and 18 in Johannesburg, which the Patriotic Alliance had taken from it in 2021.

The ANC still held the most wards in Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni, but its wards voted at lower rates than the DA’s – by 11.5 points in Johannesburg, 13.5 in Ekurhuleni, 16.9 in Tshwane.

ActionSA-won wards and ANC-won wards voted at nearly the same rate. Across the three Gauteng metros combined, ActionSA’s 53 wards averaged 49.4% turnout and the ANC’s 166 wards averaged 48.2% – a gap of 1.2 percentage points.

The DA stands apart, with the wards it won recording an average turnout of 61.8% across Gauteng.

The Zunami did not reach Gauteng; the MK Party won only one ward in Gauteng – Johannesburg’s Ward 61, encompassing Jeppestown and surrounding areas east of the Johannesburg CBD, which it took from the IFP. Turnout in this ward was 31% in 2021, 40% in 2026.

Turnout rose by nine percentage points in the metro, from 42 to 51%. The MK Party won 73 wards, 71 from the ANC and two from the DA. Turnout in those wards rose too, by 10 points on average.

But the wards the MK Party won had the lowest turnout in the metro. At 49% on average, they sat four points below the 33 wards that the DA won in the metro. Thirty-five of the MK Party’s 73 wards were below 50% turnout. In 2021, when the ANC held those same wards, they averaged 39%.

The ANC retained just two of 112 wards in eThekwini. In both, voter turnout was above 57%.

Outside Gauteng and eThekwini, the picture was less dramatic but pointed in the same direction. In Nelson Mandela Bay, the DA took five wards from the ANC, closing the gap to 28 against the ANC’s 32. Turnout rose by seven points. In every ward the DA gained, turnout was higher than in 2021 – except Ward 15, where it fell by two points and the DA won anyway.

In Mangaung, the DA gained three wards from the ANC, the Patriotic Alliance took one and the EFF one. The ANC still held 35 of 51. Turnout rose by eight points.

Buffalo City had the steepest turnout increase in the country – up 10.6 points to 55.8%, the highest of any metro. The ANC lost five wards – to the UDM, EFF, SACP and DA – but retained 38 of the 50.

Its wards voted at 55.5% on average, closer than elsewhere to the DA’s 61.5%. The ANC nonetheless lost its outright majority in the metro for the first time.

Buffalo City also overtook Cape Town to have the highest turnout.

Cape Town barely moved. The DA held 86 wards, the ANC 32. Four wards changed hands, three from the ANC to the DA, one from the DA to the ANC.

The DA’s wards voted at 59.8%, up from 51.4% in 2021. The ANC’s voted at 42.2%, up from 35.0%. Both bases returned at roughly the same rate. But the gap between them – 17.6 points – was already the widest in the country in 2021, and it remained that way.

The one ward the ANC took from the DA, Ward 85, which comprises parts of Strand and Nomzamo, was the only ward in any metro where higher turnout went the ANC’s way.

The results in Gauteng and eThekwini show a difference between the ANC-DA battle and the ANC-ActionSA and ANC-MK Party battles.

The latter is less defined by turnout, with the wards ActionSA and the MK Party won on average only having a marginally higher turnout than the ANC, compared to the DA having an average turnout higher than 10 percentage points over the ANC.

Turnout still mattered. It rose in nearly every ward that flipped. But ActionSA and the MK Party did not need the DA’s turnout advantage. They won at the ANC’s level. This suggests the voters who came back to the polls in ANC wards were not staying home; they were switching.

And this spells trouble for the ANC: they no longer only have to turn out their base; they have to keep it.

Methodology: Voter turnout figures and results are drawn from the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) published ward-level results for the 2011, 2016, 2021 and 2026 local government elections. For each ward, the IEC’s turnout figure is the highest of the ward ballot or PR ballot votes cast, divided by the total number of registered voters. Each ward is classified by the party that won the ward councillor seat, not by overall party support in the ward. Toqan, an AI tool, was used to manage the dataset and create the graphics.

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