LETTER: Middle class needs more voting members

Many column inches have discussed polls in which the ANC’s share of the vote has been falling, from more than 50% in late 2023 to less than 40% most recently.

Much has been said of the need to keep the ANC out of power, but also of the “Doomsday Pact”, an ANC-EFF alliance. That simple narrative was derailed like a Transnet train by Jacob Zuma and his MK party.

Voters vote for parties that address their concerns, and for those who best represent their needs and interests. I am an amateur political scientist, but it is clear that the ANC, EFF and MK parties attract voters based on their position as African nationalist parties with redistributive economic policies.

The proportion of the electorate that is black, poor, unskilled, unemployed, despondent and despairing has not changed in a generation and, unsurprisingly, this mirrors the share of the vote the ANC plus EFF have received in previous elections.

It is therefore easy to argue that this demographic is the best predictor of the size of the voting block that will support the ANC+EFF+MK in future elections: no poll in the last six months projected their share at less than 60% of the vote.

Property rights are not worth saving when you have no property. The private medical system is not worth protecting if that system will never treat you. The only way to increase the number of votes for politicians that will defend the interests of the middle class is for the middle class to have more members.

Why would the returns of the moonshot pact in this election not reflect the census statistics, where minorities and the middle class will still comprise meaningfully less than half the electorate?

Greg Becker
Via email

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