OPINIONISTA: The 2019 election’s partial endorsements By Susan Booysen BooysenS2
The 2o19 election was rich with signals that South African politics is changing and elections are no longer the playfield of starry-eyed believers in the 1994 dream of multi-party democracy. The much-lowered turnout, many variations on the theme of vote-splitting and spoilt ballots conveyed this message.
Politicians and policy-makers should take note of this composite set of trends, as they contemplate the sobering sets of results that all three main political parties achieved: the African National Congress down by five percentage points to an all-time national low of just under 58%, the Democratic Alliance stagnating in the early twenties, and the Economic Freedom Fighters growing but not nearly at a rate that delivers prospects for becoming a majority party.
Spoilt ballots were part of the game within the election arena. It was not big: the total number of spoilt ballots dropped marginally from 2014’s approximately 252,000 to this election’s 236,000. The total percentage of spoilt votes this time around came to a mere 1.35% of all votes cast . This low level might have been aided by the abundance of new, minor political parties that served, among others, as recipients of protest votes.
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