To the casual observer, the outcome of South Africa’s 2024 national and provincial elections, which herald a new era of national coalition governance, may appear to represent new electoral trends. But that is not the case.
While the shift in voting patterns is certainly the largest the country has seen since democratic elections began, voter fluidity – people shifting their votes from one election to the next – has been a growing trend among the South African electorate since at least 2016.
The 2024 general election is a watershed moment in South Africa’s democracy. For the first time in 30 years, the African National Congress (ANC) failed to win the majority of votes needed to form a government, securing only 40.2% of the vote.
