LETTER: Why the DA is quietly confident

Your recent editorial (“Remember, Your Vote is Secret”, February 1-7) criticising the DA for claiming the lion’s share of voter registrations between the second half of November last year and January refers. 

You correctly sum up our argument that “the political preferences of registering voters will mirror historical voting patterns in their districts”. It is indeed the case that disproportionate increases in registrations in DA strongholds are a striking indicator of the DA’s registration campaign success.

It is important to understand the electoral substantiation why we believe this is true.

One can merge the most recent voters roll with any previous roll and track the differences resulting from registrations. Every registration is assigned to a voting district by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). And since every voting district result from 2021 is reflected on the IEC website, one can reasonably make a case that the new registrations, tracked across more than 23,000 voting districts, should reflect those undisputed results in 2021. 

Logically, heavier registrations in DA strongholds vs other parties must be a cause for our encouragement. Would anyone dispute a similar ANC claim if there was, for example, strong registration in Soweto and a trickle in Sandton? Of course not!

Two further factors underpin our belief that the DA can be quietly confident about the registration success we believe has been achieved.

First, credible opinion polls, whether by the South African Institute of Race Relations, the Social Research Foundation, City Press or the Brenthurst Foundation, all poll the DA at between 24% and 31%. 

Second, where voters have had an opportunity to indicate their preferences, they have overwhelming endorsed the DA in precisely those areas where the DA enjoyed the heaviest registrations. These include Ekurhuleni (87.2%) a few days ago, Tshwane (98.6%), Govan Mbeki (92.4%), Joburg (94.7%) and Cape Town (94.1%).

Allocating registrations on the basis of historical voting data suddenly becomes pivotal when independent opinion polls and actual by-election results more than justify and substantiate this methodology. In fact, this is a far sounder basis to express our quiet confidence about 163,000 registrations than the president claiming the ANC will win the election (as he did on February 4) on a voters roll of 27-million souls without any substantiation at all!

Greg Krumbock
DA project lead: election 2024 campaign unit

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