How the Ramaphosa factor will impact on the elections

While corruption remains a concern, there is much trust in the president’s ability

THE LATEST research into the voting preferences of South Africans finds that trust in the country’s president is the single most important predictor of potential party choices at the ballot. If voting behaviour follows suit this could be the key to understanding the success of the ANC on election day, May 8.

These findings come from the second nationally representative study conducted by the Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg. The survey was completed in the fourth quarter of 2018. The first study was done in the fourth quarter of 2017.

The findings suggest that recent leadership changes in the governing party and government have bolstered trust in the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa compared with his predecessor Jacob Zuma. The research suggests that this factor is expected to be a significant predictor of voter behaviour.

To understand what the influence of Ramaphosa’s presidency is likely to be in the upcoming elections, researchers from the Centre for Social Development in Africa compared the most recent survey results with those of an earlier survey conducted during Zuma’s presidency.

Trust in the presidency under Zuma was at 26%. This time round that number had gone up to 55% – 29 percentage points higher than under Zuma.

This is considered reliably representative of more than 38 million potential voters. It’s the second of a three-part study to understand the links between socio-economic rights and what drives voter choices in the coming elections.

To understand the shift in support for the ANC versus the opposition parties, the researchers constructed two models for analysis of the most recent survey results. This was to control for the change in leadership.

When Ramaphosa was removed from the equation, governance or trust in institutions such as Parliament and the courts was no longer a predictor of voter preference.

But when inserted as a factor on its own and independent of trust in institutions, trust in the presidency emerged as the single most important predictor of voter preference for the governing party in the upcoming elections.

These findings echo other recently released studies and polls which predict that the ANC is likely to win the upcoming general election.