South Africa: ANC's 45% poll panic

The ANC in Gauteng has asked its volunteers to intensify their mobilisation campaign in townships to avoid getting less than 50% of the vote in the polls, City Press reported on Sunday.It was sparked by its own internal polls, which showed it could obtain at most 45% of electoral support in the province.This would be a sharp decline from the 64.4% the party won in the 2009 general elections.

The party’s internal polls, which were presented to campaigners in two separate meetings in recent weeks, suggest the party’s electoral support stands at 45% at best.The ANC’s in-house research is in line with the findings of an Ipsos survey, published in politicsweb, which put the ruling party’s support in Gauteng at 45.5%.This means it will need a coalition partner to govern Gauteng if the tide does not turn before 7 May.

However, ANC president Jacob Zuma, speaking in Ga-Rankuwa on Saturday, said he was confident the party would stay in powerin Gauteng.Ipsos SA's director of public affairs, Mari Harris, said in a statement issued in Februarythat the public's perception of how well government was doing had declined in the past three years, Harris said."Only about a third of South Africans are of the opinion that the country is going in the right direction."

Half of the adults believe that President Jacob Zuma and his government are not doing their jobs well, the survey showed."It should come as no surprise that the public are not impressed with government performance in most of the policy areas we measure," said Harris.Ipsos, a market research company, had conducted face-to-face interviews with 3 564 randomly selected adult South Africans who were interviewed in their homes and home languages.

The interviews were conducted in November last year, said Harris, adding that they were done every six months.The DA's candidate for premier in Gauteng, Musi Maimane, said in mid-January that the The DA's polling shows that the ANC's support could drop to less than 50%in Gauteng.The ANC's immediate response was to shoot it down as a "pipe dream".


Source: News24