South Africa votes with ANC forecast below 40 percent — by polls no outlet names

Full analysis

What happened Why it matters How each country tells it Room for disagreement Our assessment Sources and evidence

What happened

South Africans went to the polls on Wednesday, November 4, 2026, to elect municipal councillors who will choose mayors for eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district councils and 205 local councils. More than 500 parties were registered with the Electoral Commission to contest roughly 10,000 council seats, Senegal’s Dakaractu reported. Polls opened at 7:00 and closed at 9:00, and Sy Mamabolo, the commission’s chief electoral officer, assured voters that anyone in a queue by closing time would still be allowed to vote. By 5:00 pm the commission’s preliminary estimate put turnout at about 12 million ballots, eNCA reported: Gauteng led with roughly 3 million, followed by KwaZulu-Natal at 2.5 million, the Western Cape at 1.5 million, the Eastern Cape at 1.4 million, Limpopo at 1.1 million, Mpumalanga at 854,000, North West at 702,000, the Free State at 588,000 and the Northern Cape at 299,000. Al Jazeera, citing the commission, put the registered electorate at a record 29.2 million across 23,696 voting stations, with more than 1.4 million special votes cast on Monday and Tuesday; Deutsche Welle reported more than 29 million registered.

The contest fell on an African National Congress that has lost ground in every recent vote. In 2021 it fell below 50 percent of the municipal vote for the first time — Dakaractu put the score at under 46 percent — and in 2024 it lost its 30-year parliamentary majority, entering a national coalition with the Democratic Alliance and smaller parties. Polls suggest the slide is continuing: Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle and Reuters, under The Hindu’s masthead, each reported that ANC support could drop below 40 percent this time, though none of the three named the poll or polls behind that projection.

Johannesburg is the biggest prize. The financial capital has cycled through five mayors in four years, Al Jazeera noted, and the Democratic Alliance fielded its 75-year-old former leader Helen Zille for the top job, her campaign including a snorkelling stunt in a mud-filled trench flooded by a burst municipal water pipe. A News24 poll put Zille at 36 percent — the most votes but short of a majority, meaning she would need coalition partners, particularly the ANC, to govern — and Zille told the Associated Press the ANC was "in free fall." Reuters, carried by The Hindu, independently described Zille as projected to win the most votes but fall short of a majority. The Democratic Alliance is also expected to retain Cape Town, Deutsche Welle and Reuters reported.

In the coastal city of Durban, inside the eThekwini metro, Wednesday’s vote was the first local contest for former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party. Zuma told supporters on Sunday, in remarks carried by AFP, "We are going to start by taking back our country here," and Al Jazeera reported that Durban has become a centre of anti-migrant sentiment that featured prominently in the campaign.

President Cyril Ramaphosa, who cast his ballot at Hyde Park High School in Johannesburg, said in remarks carried by Deutsche Welle and The Hindu that "municipal failures have contributed to declining public trust and confidence in democratic governance," adding that "this election is an opportunity to turn this around."

Coalition government is already the norm across much of the country: 74 of 257 municipalities were run by coalitions or minority administrations as of February, according to the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, cited by Al Jazeera. Turnout in the 2021 municipal elections was 46 percent. Police recorded 21 election-related cases since Sunday, and KwaZulu-Natal had 165 voting stations classed as high risk, the most of any province, Al Jazeera reported. Final results are expected on Sunday, November 8.

Why it matters

The consequences run through the country’s largest cities. Johannesburg, which has had five mayors in four years, could hand the most votes to Zille without giving her a majority, pushing the city back into the same coalition arithmetic that produced the churn: she would need partners, particularly the ANC, to govern, as Al Jazeera reported. The pattern already holds widely — 74 of 257 municipalities were under coalition or minority rule as of February — and Haru Mutasa, Al Jazeera’s Johannesburg correspondent, said it seems "no one party will win the outright majority," with the ANC likely to work with smaller parties. More such arrangements are the mechanism through which municipal failures have fed declining trust in democratic governance, in Ramaphosa’s own framing. The result also reaches forward. Deutsche Welle described the vote as a gauge of public mood before the 2029 national election, and both Al Jazeera and Reuters reported that it will shape the race to succeed Ramaphosa as party leader at the ANC’s December 2027 conference, as his term as leader winds down. For Zuma’s MK party, a strong first showing in Durban would mark the former president’s return as a force; for Dakaractu, the erosion reads as a continental pattern in which ex-liberation movements are punished at the ballot in the cities where voters blame them for corruption and failed services.

How each country tells it

• 🇿🇦
  enca.com · South Africa · original reporting

  Election-day logistics and turnout: the IEC’s 5pm briefing, a province-by-province vote count, and the assurance that anyone in the queue by 9pm will still be allowed to vote.
• 🇸🇳
  Dakaractu · Senegal · original reporting

  The ANC’s crumbling electorate as a cautionary tale: a historical liberation party sliding below 46 percent in 2021 municipals as city-level corruption and failed services alienate its base.
• 🇶🇦
  Al Jazeera · Qatar · original reporting

  The ANC as embattled incumbent facing coalition arithmetic, with campaign color — Zille’s snorkeling stunt, Zuma’s Durban push, 74 of 257 municipalities already run by coalitions.
• 🇩🇪
  Deutsche Welle · Germany · original reporting

  A stability-and-transition frame: the vote as a gauge of public mood before 2029, with RAMAPHOSA’s own admission that ‘municipal failures have contributed to declining public trust’.
• 🇮🇳
  The Hindu · India · wire copy

  Coalition rule looms: further ANC losses, Johannesburg as ‘the biggest prize’, and the 2027 succession race as coalition governments strain basic service delivery.

Room for disagreement

The strongest case that the story will go another way starts with the one fact the converging coverage obscures: the below-40 forecast rests on polls none of the three outlets names, and the only named survey measures a single city. If those unnamed polls are soft, the ANC could hold up better than the forecast implies. There is an on-record argument for that reading. Ramaphosa, speaking on the record, insists the election is "an opportunity to turn this around," and both Deutsche Welle and Reuters note that the ANC retains the loyalty of some voters because of its role in ending apartheid. That loyal base, if it turns out in a low-turnout election the way it did in 2021’s 46 percent turnout, could keep the party’s losses smaller than the "free fall" Zille describes — or, just as plausibly, the decline could run deeper than 40 percent and the unattributed polls could be understating it. The coverage’s convergence on one unnamed number makes both directions easy to miss, but it does not settle which.