Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Elections are usually a contest between competing parties. Sometimes, though, they are fundamentally about a battle for power within a party. In the case of South Africa’s May 8 election, the future of the ANC is in the balance. No fewer than 48 parties are contesting the election in which each voter will cast two ballots, one for the national legislature and the other for their provincial legislature. South Africa uses a closed list proportional representation system: Voters choose a party, not a candidate. Parties are allocated seats in the national and nine provincial legislatures in proportion to their share of the vote.
Notably, only a fraction of the parties will win enough votes to take a seat: Right now, 13 parties are currently represented in the national parliament. In addition, although elections are becoming more competitive, only two parties, the governing African National Congress (ANC) and the official opposition in the national parliament, the Democratic Alliance (DA), govern provinces: The ANC controls eight and the DA only one. Only three parties won more than 2.5 percent of the vote in the last national elections in 2014—the ANC with 62 percent, the DA with 22 percent, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a breakaway group that parted ways with the ANC, with 6 percent. So, despite the plethora of parties and a hotly contested campaign in which parties behave as if the result hinged on a few votes, the election is, really, a contest between two parties, one of which usually wins three times the vote of the other. To understand the dynamic between the two factions vying to control the governing party, further context is needed.
Elections are usually a contest between competing parties. Sometimes, though, they are fundamentally about a battle for power within a party. In the case of South Africa’s May 8 election, the future of the ANC is in the balance. No fewer than 48 parties are contesting the election in which each voter will cast two ballots, one for the national legislature and the other for their provincial legislature. South Africa uses a closed list proportional representation system: Voters choose a party, not a candidate. Parties are allocated seats in the national and nine provincial legislatures in proportion to their share of the vote.
Notably, only a fraction of the parties will win enough votes to take a seat: Right now, 13 parties are currently represented in the national parliament. In addition, although elections are becoming more competitive, only two parties, the governing African National Congress (ANC) and the official opposition in the national parliament, the Democratic Alliance (DA), govern provinces: The ANC controls eight and the DA only one. Only three parties won more than 2.5 percent of the vote in the last national elections in 2014—the ANC with 62 percent, the DA with 22 percent, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a breakaway group that parted ways with the ANC, with 6 percent. So, despite the plethora of parties and a hotly contested campaign in which parties behave as if the result hinged on a few votes, the election is, really, a contest between two parties, one of which usually wins three times the vote of the other. To understand the dynamic between the two factions vying to control the governing party, further context is needed.
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