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The ANC will have the support of 78,2% of the voters in Mpumalanga in next year’s provincial election, according to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). This follows an extensive nation-wide survey - the South African Social Attitudes Survey - conducted by the HSRC. The results of other questions on a range of issues will be released early next year. “The HSRC prediction is that, nationally, the ANC will win 67,8% of the votes next year,” said Dr Udesh Pillay, Executive Director of Surveys, Analyses, Modelling and Mapping in the HSRC. “However, in Mpumalanga, our prediction is that the ANC’s share of the vote will be considerably higher, at 78,2%. We calculate that the DA will get 13,6% of the votes, followed by the NNP with 3,8% of the votes,” said Pillay. The prediction would give the ANC 24 seats in the provincial legislature in 2004, compared with the 26 seats it won in 1999. The DA is expected to win 4 seats, up 3 from its 1 seat in 1999, whereas the NNP is expected to get 1 seat, similar to the 1 seat it had won in 1999. The prediction is based on a massive new survey of South African social attitudes conducted by the HSRC, with a sample of 7 501 respondents of voting age drawn from a random selection across the country. “This is one of the largest sample bases of any attitudinal survey conducted in South Africa, and three times as large as the typical samples for commercial opinion surveys,” said Dr Mark Orkin, the HSRC’s CEO. Nearly a third of the respondents in the national survey (32,6%) did not indicate which party they will vote for in next year’s election. Early preferences were statistically imputed for this group, using a well-known statistical technique called discriminant analysis. This technique assigns undeclared voters to a political party by establishing predictors of party choice among those who had declared their voting intentions, and applying them to those whose voting intentions were not declared. An additional 7,8% of respondents said that they would not vote in next year’s election, and were not included in the analysis. It should be noted that the above response, namely that only 7,8% will not vote (meaning that 92,8% of respondents then intend to vote) does not match with national and international experience in this regard. For example: in the 1999 election in South Africa only about 70% of the eligible population turned out to vote and in the local government election only about 44% cast their vote. This factor may have a material effect on the votes as predicted in this study. The survey also allows the HSRC to break down the responses by race, gender, age group and the type of area in which people live – urban formal, urban informal, “tribal” (mainly the former homelands). Interesting features of these breakdowns for Mpumalanga were that, within the ANC, (which is expected to get 78,2% of the vote) 97,6% of voters are Black and 1,9% Coloured. Female voters predominate within the ANC, DA and NNP. Female voters make up 65% of the ANC voters in Mpumalanga, 53% of the DA’s voters are female and 59% of the NNP’s voters are female. The majority of the DA’s voters fall in the 35 - 49 years old age group. Amongst DA voters, 26% are aged 18 – 24, 18% fall in the age group 25 – 34, with 32% aged 35 – 49 and 24% are in the over 50 age category. Early next year the HSRC will release results, distilled from the same survey, of responses on topics such as household poverty, national identities and patriotism, racism and xenophobia, crime, gender issues, moral issues such as abortion and the death penalty, interpersonal violence and inter-generational attitudes. Responses will be reported by province, gender, race, age group and other demographic variables. Dr Orkin said the new format of the HSRC’s attitudinal survey (SASAS) would provide South Africa with a unique long-term account of shifts in culture, social attitudes and values among the country’s population. “SASAS 2003 is the start of these annual measurements on the big political, social and moral issues of the day,” he said. Dr Stephen Rule, Director of Surveys at the HSRC, said the HSRC had previously conducted annual attitudinal surveys, including surveys of voting intentions. These had been based, however, on a once-off series of questions, only occasionally repeated in subsequent years. The new SASAS series would not only be more accurate, as it was based on a much larger sample, but would be conducted on a regular annual basis and provide detailed breakdowns. “The survey uses a master sample based on 1 000 census enumerator areas spread across all provinces. The sample has been stratified so that we can analyse and report on the responses nationally or regionally, by race and by geographic sub-type (urban, informal, rural or tribal). It is a very powerful research tool,” Rule said. He stressed that there are important differences between an election prediction based on an attitude survey, and the actual result of an election several months later. Variations may arise from whether voters register in advance, which voters actually turn out on the day, and important events that may occur between the poll and the election. These variations can differ appreciably for different parties. Full results and analysis of all modules of the survey, including political preferences, will be published by mid-2004. The results of the national political module of the survey were released in Cape Town on 19 November 2003. The full presentation and tables for Mpumalanga can be downloaded from the HSRC website at www.hsrc.ac.za
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