This is who voters think would do a better job than the ANC right now

The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has published a second tranche of results from its February 2019 election poll showing universal voter dissatisfaction with ANC government when it comes to delivery.

The poll comes at a time of rolling blackouts, with the country’s ruling party unable to provide electricity for long periods of time during the course of the day, leading to widespread frustration and anger among the people trying to go about their daily lives, running a business, getting to work, feeding a family.

According to the IRR, the ANC national government has a negative net satisfaction score among all voter types on all of six core issues – economic growth, crime; education; healthcare; corruption; and land reform – but is rated as the party best placed to deliver on five of them, the exception being corruption, which a majority of voters believe the EFF would be best at.

Overall, black voters give negative net satisfaction scores to the ANC government on economic growth (-48%); crime (-31%); corruption (-33%) and land reform (-7%), and marginal positive net satisfaction scores on education (+5%) and healthcare (+3%).

Among ANC voters, 51% are “very unsatisfied” with the national government’s performance on fighting corruption – but 47% of them also believe the ANC, rather than the DA or EFF, is best at fighting corruption.

The first set of questions in the survey, conducted in mid-February among 1,611 demographically representative registered voters, focused on how satisfied or dissatisfied voters are with the ANC national government’s performance on six core issues (economic growth, crime, education, healthcare, corruption and land reform).

The second set focused on which of the big three political parties – the ANC, DA and EFF – voters believe is best placed to deliver on a set of similar core issues (economic growth, crime, education, healthcare, corruption and basic services).

The report contains summary tables of the two sets of questions, as well as each individual question on which the summaries are built.

Findings:

• Among all voters, the ANC national government has a negative net satisfaction score on all of six core issues.
• The highest net dissatisfaction rate on all issues is recorded among minority voters and DA Voters.
• Black voters give negative net satisfaction scores to the ANC on economic growth (-48%); crime (-31%); corruption (-33%) and land reform (-7%), and marginal positive net satisfaction scores on education (+5%) and healthcare (+3%).
• EFF voters are universally dissatisfied with the ANC national government performance on all six issues, but more sympathetic than DA voters.
• ANC voters, unsurprisingly, are the most sympathetic to the ANC national government performance, but more dissatisfied than satisfied on three of the six issues: economic growth; crime; corruption and land reform.

Service delivery perceptions

• Among all voters, across five of the six issues at a national level, the ANC is selected as the party best placed to deliver on that particular issue. The only exception, as a national issue, is fighting corruption, on which a majority of all voters (30.1%) stated that the EFF would do the best job.
• Significantly, in Gauteng, the DA was chosen as best placed to deliver on three of six issues, among all voters: on economic growth and job creation, on fighting crime and on corruption.
• Among Black voters, the ANC emerged as the dominant choice to deliver best on all issues at national and provincial levels, bar three, where the EFF emerged with a majority: fighting crime, among black voters in Gauteng (36%) and fighting corruption, both nationally (38%) and in Gauteng (38%).
• The DA universally dominated at every level and on every issue among minority voters, all with a very high majority.

Half of 51% of ANC Voters are “very unsatisfied” with the ANC national government’s performance on fighting corruption. 47% of ANC voters also believe the ANC is best – out of the ANC, DA and EFF – at fighting corruption.

Read: ANC could reverse losses in Gauteng in the 2019 elections