The DA added while they believe they had an excellent campaign, these numbers are indicative of residents’ voter apathy and voters’ dwindling faith in political parties as potential agents of change.

Speaking to OFM News, the party’s provincial leader, Andrew Louw, says he expected to see larger numbers in some of the province’s biggest towns. He says the party will now go back to the drawing board so that it performs better in the next elections, in 2024.

Despite Louw’s disappointment with how his party is fairing at the moment as votes continue to be counted, a report from the IEC shows that the party has done better in these elections when compared to 2014. Back then it received 101 882 votes in the province, which accounted for 23,86% of the total number of votes. As it stands, the total number of votes counted in favour of the party at the moment stands at 97 134, which is a total of 26,01% of the total votes received this far. This means that provincially, the party will do better than it did in the previous elections.

Meanwhile, the Economic Freedom Fighters’ secretary in the province, Shadrack Tlhaole, said that the party is happy that it has managed to improve its voter base at various areas and it hopes to steadily build on this growth by 2021 when local government elections will take place.

“We are doing very well as we’ve increased our percentage. Even with a low voter turnout, we are motivated by the confidence the people of the province have shown in us,” Tlhaole said.

According to a comparison report provided at the IEC centre in Kimberley, the EFF have since the 2014 general elections grown by more than 3% as the votes which have been counted so far show that they received 32 594 votes in this year’s elections, compared to the 22 083 votes they received five years ago when they made their debut as a political party.

Finally, the Freedom Front Plus in the province, who was also one of the parties which showed the largest growth in terms of numbers, also shared their sentiments with OFM News on their progression in these elections, saying while they are happy for the ANC, which seems to be leading, they are also proud of their substantial growth in this year’s elections.

The party’s provincial leader, Dr Wynand Boshoff, said his party was very happy at what the counted votes were suggesting in terms of the party’s growth trend. He said that he believes that much of this growth, which can be seen in this year’s elections, is owing to the movement of minority voters from the Democratic Alliance to the FF Plus. “I think minority voters traditionally voted for the DA, not really looking at its policies because they assumed that if a party is against the ANC, they should agree with it. Then it transpired in the last few years that the DA actually has another set of values that most of the minority voters would not subscribe to,” Boshoff said.

Explaining this further, he said that historically, minority voters were often loyal voters and voted for the DA since 1994. The shift from the DA to their party, therefore, signifies changes in political perception, which Boshoff says the party finds remarkable. A comparative report shows that the party in the province grew by almost 3% since the 2014 elections according to the number of votes counted so far. It received 13 108 votes this year, compared to the 5 761 votes it received in 2014. This made up 5,671% of the total number of votes received that year. At the moment, the votes they have received in this year’s elections count for 3,45% of the total number of votes received in the Northern Cape.

OFM News