South Africa is drawing nearer to a landmark national general election in 2024. Based on recent electoral trends and opinion polls, the governing African National Congress (ANC) is expected to drop below 50% of the national vote for the first time since democracy in 1994.
The end of single party dominance is expected to result in the country having its first national coalition government since the ANC came to power. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the country’s third largest party, is a must watch in that transformation. The party’s electoral support has been growing since 2014, amid declines for both the ANC and the Democratic Alliance (DA), the main opposition.
In that time period, the ANC’s electoral support has fallen from over 62% in 2014 to 57.50% in 2019, and the DA’s from over 22% to 20.7%. The EFF’s share of the vote rose from just over 6% in its first election in 2014 to about 11% in 2019.
