South African Election Maps and Stats

[Kitteh]

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What? Why? To someone with little to no knowledge of SA this seems really counter-intuitive. The only thing I can think of is some kind of Afrikaans-speaking solidarity between Coloured people and white Afrikaners. Seems weird that that would be enough to cause people to vote for a party that was for denying them basic human rights just a few years before.

[Kitteh]

Hashemite, do you think you could do vote strength maps for COPE in PE? Looking at the 2009 results it looks like they got some votes from blacks but also did well among  coloureds (Northern Cape was their best province, IIRC, and looking at the map on wiki it looks like they actually won a few wards in rural WC/NC that I think are mostly coloured). I'd be interested to see how well they did in some of the coloured areas of PE.

On a related note, I'm wondering whether COPE is taking more votes from the ANC or the DA at this point. From what I understand, COPE's vote mostly comes from people who used to vote for the ANC but don't like them anymore but can't bring themselves to vote for the DA. The DA seems to think that COPE is taking black votes from the ANC (which was the DA's entire strategy for winning PE in 2011) but given what you said about Joburg and Pretoria I wonder if a lot of COPE people would vote for the DA if COPE disappeared.

EDIT: I just rechecked wiki and it looks like those wards I thought were COPE wards were actually ID wards *facepalm*. In my defense, the colors are pretty close.

[Kitteh]

Hmm...interesting. Thanks.

[Kitteh]

COPE is basically a bunch of old corrupt and autocratic ANC party hacks who had a falling out with the ANC central leadership and now campaign on the guise of being reformers. So I don't see why they'd do too well amongst the DA, though there might be some middle class blacks who vote for them pretending that they are reformers and would vote for the DA over the ANC in a two way election if absolutely forced.

My (non)understanding was that the people who vote for COPE are basically people who hate the ANC but also hate the DA. So I guess it would just come down to who they hate the most

[Kitteh]

I've been looking at 2009 results by ward in PE, and while still not sure about boundary changes, here's something interesting.

COPE's best ward was ward 30:
ANC 65.6%, COPE 31.2%, UDM 1%, DA 0.7%

In 2011, the PR list vote went ANC 82.4%, COPE 10.9%, DA 3.8%, UDM 1.3%. In the ward vote, an indie took 20.4%, almost all from the ANC which won only 64.3% on that ballot.

It is naturally a 99% black ward or so, but it's fairly interesting. It includes Soweto on Sea, a really run down ghetto/shantytown, but also Kwamagxaki, a fairly black middle-class type of area (Google StreetView will show you).

Results by precinct:
Kwamagxaki (2011 PR results)
10250682:
ANC 53.1% (76.8%)
COPE 42.7% (15.7%)
UDM 1.3% (0.7%)
DA 1.2% (4.9%)

10250862
ANC 49.9% (76.3%)
COPE 45.9% (13.2%)
UDM 1.4% (2.5%)
DA 0.9% (7%)

Soweto on Sea (2011 PR results)
10250693:
ANC 85.4% (89.8%)
COPE 12.6% (6.3%)
UDM 0.7% (0.9%)
DA 0.3% (1.8%)

10250705
ANC 82.3% (91.9%)
COPE 15.5% (5.1%)
DA 0.5% (0.6%)

10251740
ANC 83.6% (82%)
COPE 13.2% (12.5%)
UDM 1.4% (0.7%)
DA 0.8% (1.8%)

That indie won over 40% in 10250705 and 10250693, which lie east of a main artery which seems to divide the shantytown. The indie won crumbs in Kwamagxaki.

I do hope this interests somebody besides me

So if I'm reading that right, that means COPE did better in the middle-class-ish areas than in the really poor areas? That makes sense.

And Google Street View really is awesome.

Thanks for all of this by the way, I'm really loving it.

[Kitteh]

Just for comparison, here is a map from wiki showing dominant languages in PE:


Beige is English (spoken mostly by whites), teal is Afrikaans (coloureds) and red is Xhosa (blacks). Grey means that no one language is dominant.

Compare that with Hashemite's map of the election:


Very strong correlation, obviously.

[Kitteh]

On the linguistic aspect of things, however, with the DA's crap-poor performances even in Cape Town's black wards, I am left wondering if Xhosa black voters (as most blacks in Cape Town are) might be more inclined to voting ANC or at least not voting for the DA than other black voters (Joburg/Pretoria blacks are mainly either Zulu, Sotho or Tswana). Mandela was a Xhosa (as was Mbeki) so perhaps that might play a role. The DA did increase its vote in black areas compared to 2006, for sure, but their vote remains extremely low (even as an incumbent party with a strong governance record, which is the DA's strategy for winning over black voters).

Weren't there some people who were predicting that there would be a backlash against the ANC among Xhosa for dropping Mbeki and replacing him with a Zulu (Zuma)? I guess that didn't happen at all.

If you're feeling inclined to do more, I'd like to see Durban (or eThekwini, as its officially called, which according to wiki may mean "the one-testicled one" in Zulu ).

Although wiki actually has a map of the 2006 election in eThekwini:


Red being the Inkatha Freedom Party, Purple being indies, and Orange being the Minority Front, which IIRC is a party for Indians.

If you do a 2011 map it would be kind of cool to compare it to the 2006 one. I wonder if the IFP still holds any FPTP seats.

[Kitteh]

A weird thing is also the University of the Western Cape which voted 84% or so ANC, I don't know if this is a predominantly black campus.

According to Adrian Frith's census website (census.adrianfrith.com), UWC was 89% black in the 2001 census: http://census.adrianfrith.com/place/17102062

How surprising that the ANC vote is almost the exact same as the black %

[Kitteh]

What are all those gray areas in the DA map? Places where the DA didn't even bother running a candidate?

[Kitteh]

Excellent, thanks! The COPE map in particular is really interesting. If I'm reading that right, COPE is definitely a black middle class party.

[Kitteh]

Not to leave Hash to do this thread all by himself, here's my contribution:

Something on rural KwaZulu-Natal would be great, actually.

Here are the 2011 municipals by ward in Zululand district. Zululand is composed of five local municipalities: Ulundi, Nongoma, Abaquluisi, uPhongolo, and eDumbe.

Here's the totals by municipality:

Ulundi
IFP: 59% of the vote, 21 ward seats, 7 PR list seats, 28 seats total
NFP 28% of the vote, 3 ward, 10 PR, 13 total
ANC 12% of the vote, 0 ward , 6 PR, 6 total

Nongoma
NFP 45% of the vote, 13 ward, 6 PR, 19 total
IFP: 40% of the vote, 6 ward, 9 PR, 17 total
ANC 14% of the vote, 0 ward , 6 PR, 6 total

Abaquluisi
ANC 39% of the vote, 10 ward , 7 PR, 17 total
IFP: 35% of the vote, 10 ward, 6 PR, 16 total
NFP 16% of the vote, 0 ward, 7 PR, 7 total
DA 7% of the vote, 2 ward, 1 PR, 3 total
Owethu Resident's Association 2% of the vote, 0 ward, 1 PR, 1 total <--idk what this is

uPhongolo
ANC 40% of the vote, 7 ward , 4 PR, 11 total
NFP 29% of the vote, 4 ward, 4 PR, 8 total
IFP: 26% of the vote, 3 ward, 4 PR, 7 total
DA 5% of the vote, 0 ward, 1 PR, 1 total

eDumbe
NFP 51% of the vote, 6 ward, 2 PR, 8 total
ANC 28% of the vote, 2 ward , 2 PR, 4 total
IFP: 16% of the vote, 0 ward, 2 PR, 2 total
DA 4% of the vote, 0 ward, 1 PR, 1 total

A few random notes:

*Since these are technically independent elections in each municipality, there's a lot of differences between municipalities here. In Ulundi the ANC was a non-factor while the same was true for the IFP in eDumbe.

*The two DA wards are in the white/Afrikaner outpost of Vryheid which for a short time was the capital of the Nieuwe Republiek Boer state. The DA did extremely bad otherwise, obviously. Most of their other votes came from other scattered white villages.

*There aren't really any demographic differences between places that vote IFP/NFP/ANC (all of them 99.9% zulu, extremely poor and young), but it doesn't seem totally random either. It does seem as if the ANC did slightly better in the towns/villages while the IFP did better in the hinterland. As always I'm sure that a lot of it was personal/local factors.

[Kitteh]

And the other place I have been interested in doing, Midvaal, just outside of Joburg in Gauteng:


Midvaal is the only municipality the DA won outside of the Western Cape and Baviaans right on the border with WC in the Eastern Cape (they're in coalition w/ COPE in a couple of municipalities in the Northern Cape IIRC). It's also 58% black and 39% white, which makes it the only majority-black district the DA controls. Midvaal is mostly wealthy/middle class suburbs of Johannesburg, with some townships scattered around. It looks like the DA won Midvaal because the ANC took "only" about 85% of the black vote while the DA won maybe 10% of the black vote plus 96-7% of the whites (a few whites voted for the VF+, which got 1 PR seat). A good result for them but not too surprising because there are probably a fair amount of middle class blacks in Midvaal.

[Kitteh]

I was sick today and had a lot of free time on my hands, so...more KZN! Here's Uthungulu district, which stretches from the town of Richard's Bay inland to Zuma's home in Nkandla.



There's a definite pattern here of the ANC doing better in the urban/coastal areas and the IFP and NFP doing better in the rural inland. The ANC's best area was in the townships near Richard's Bay. They got around 80% of the vote there. The DA took Richard's Bay itself which is the beautiful, conveniently located seaside areas sectioned off for whites and some indians during apartheid while the majority of the (black) population lives in townships on the outskirts as always. Obviously the DA was totally irrelevant outside of the little white enclaves.

Two wards were won by indie candidates. I have no idea who they are but the fact that they're right next to each other probably isn't a coincidence.

Also, there was a by-election in Nkandla ward 4 last week. Here's the updated map with those results:



The IFP took ward 4 from the ANC with at 16% swing. Pretty good result for them, it got some attention in the national media, since this is Zuma's home region and the center of a controversy recently about Zuma using state money to build a big house there.