Social Research Foundation Daily Tracking Poll - South Africa's May 2024 National Election

This report provides a daily track of the national political state of play in South Africa in the lead up to the May 29 election. The baseline of the tracking poll is a survey of 1 835 demographically and geographically representative registered voters conducted by the Foundation during April of 2024. Every day 300 new participants are surveyed and the 300 oldest participants are removed from the survey. By doing so a daily moving average of 1 800 voters, that is refreshed every 6 days, is created. The data in the report is not a forecast of the May 29 election result, but rather a snapshot of the daily current position. Users of this report should be aware that towards the final days of a tracking poll it should be possible to see the trendlines flatten out as political opinion crystallizes immediately before an election. However, towards the late stages of this tracking poll that is not happening. The reason for this is that an unprecedented degree of voter uncertainty about which party to support, as the ANC fractures, is causing a small share of voters to move back and forth between the ANC, EFF, MK and also the DA. It is unlikely that this volatility will settle before the election. Users of this report should be further aware that a margin of error of just over 2% applies to the data in this report. What that means is that if the report estimates support for a party to be at a level of X, the level of support could be 2 or so percentage points above or below X. Between the volatility of voter decision making and margin of error, report users should be circumspect about making precise political predictions about the result of the May 29 election.