“Neck and neck”: the DA’s oldest text message, now with decimals

Ten days before the 4 November local elections, the DA says it is just 1.2 points behind the ANC nationally. BizNews editor Alec Hogg reads that claim with a pencil in hand. There is no named pollster. No sample size. No margin of error. Yet independent metro polls point the same way, and even a rival rates the DA's turnout machine. So is it really neck and neck? Hogg reckons the bigger story needs no poll at all..By Alec Hogg.Jack Miller came through to Hermanus last week to talk about Cape Independence. Somewhere between Shaka Zulu and Singapore, he said something that has stuck with me since. Why, I asked him, don’t more Capetonians vote for his party if they like his ideas? Because, he said, the DA sends them a thousand SMSes saying it’s neck and neck with the ANC. The message is: If you don’t vote DA, the ANC gets in.In the Western Cape that’s nonsense, Miller claims, and has the numbers to prove it. Together, the ANC and EFF managed 24% in the province in 2024. But he’d put his finger on one of South Africa's most effective tools in politics. Fear of the other guy.Which brings us to today’s press release from Ashor Sarupen, Deputy Finmin and also the DA’s national campaign manager. It is republished below. The headline: the DA is within 1.2 percentage points of overtaking the ANC nationally. DA on 28.4%. ANC on 29.6%. Neck and neck. Only this time it’s not an SMS to Constantia; it’s a pitch to the whole country.Charlie Munger would have smiled. Show me the incentive, he used to say, and I’ll show you the outcome. A campaign manager ten days out from an election is not going to release a poll that shows his party trailing by a mile. Nobody would. That doesn’t make the number wrong. It does mean we read it with a pencil in hand.And the pencil finds a gap immediately. The release refers to national polls. Not one specifically. So there’s no pollster, no sample size, no margin of error, no turnout model. We went looking and couldn’t find those figures. A JSE company announcing a profit forecast without naming the auditor would be in trouble with the regulator by teatime.Herman Mashaba, unsurprisingly, has no time for any of it. When I put the latest MarkData numbers to him on Wednesday, numbers showing his Action SA at 10% in Johannesburg, he called polls “laughable” and said that, in four decades of business and politics, he’d learnt they’re done for political agendas. His advice to pollsters was blunt: go and do your poll in Soweto. Of course, Herman also told me he’d be disappointed with 30% in Joburg, and that the DA should slaughter cows if it gets 5% in Soweto. Everyone’s a forecaster in the last fortnight of a campaign.So let’s park the press release and look at what we do know.The direction of travel is real. In August, the DA itself trumpeted Social Research Foundation numbers showing a seven-point gap: the DA at 27% nationally and the ANC down to 34%. If this new poll comes from the same people, the gap has nearly closed in ten weeks. That would be extraordinary. If it comes from someone else, it’s apples and pears.The metro polling, from people who aren’t running anyone’s campaign, points the same way. MarkData has the DA leading the ANC by 13% in Johannesburg, where the governing party faces widespread dissatisfaction over water, electricity, roads and sewage. Thirteen points, in the city the ANC treated as a personal piggy bank for the best part of three decades (call it what it is: looting, with a mayoral chain on). In Nelson Mandela Bay and Ekurhuleni, the eNCA MarkData poll has the DA ahead by 37.7% to 37.4% and 31.2% to 29.4%. That’s a dead heat. But a dead heat in Ekurhuleni, of all places, would have made people laugh in 2021.Mashaba’s own diagnosis of the ANC was characteristically colourful. The patient, he told me, is in ICU with a heart problem, but the doctors have brought in the best brain surgeons in the world. They know nothing about repairing hearts. He doesn’t think the patient will ever recover. Now for the bits Saropen’s press release leaves out.Turnout, first. William Saunderson-Meyer made the point in one of our weekly chats: turnouts are notoriously low in local government elections, and this is a really important one. Sarupen half-admits it. The DA could win majorities, he says, “if DA voters get out and vote”. That’s a very large if, wearing a forecast’s clothes.Here’s the twist, though. Jack Miller, no friend of the DA, reckons its machine is the best in the business. Minibuses, T-shirts, old-age homes bused to the polling station on special-vote day. His rule of thumb? If the DA polls 40%, it gets 49%. Higher-turnout communities lean DA. If he’s right, the 1.2 points may turn out to be conservative.Then the coalitions. Sarupen wants to end “chaotic coalitions”. So does every ratepayer in Gauteng. But not one independent poll we’ve seen outside Cape Town gives the DA a majority. Corné Mulder has already laid down his marker: give voters the assurance you won’t bring the ANC back into power. Mashaba says he’ll work with the DA, but only if Helen Zille isn’t in the council. That doesn't sound like stability arriving. That’s the sound of the horse-trading starting early..Read more:.Three polls, one story: ANC slides, DA leads Joburg and Tshwane, MK rules eThekwini.Warren Buffett likes to quote his old teacher: in the short run the market is a voting machine, in the long run a weighing machine. Elections turn that on its head. The polls are the weighing machine, all models and assumptions and guesses about who’ll bother. On 4 November the voting machine switches on. It doesn’t read press releases.The story isn’t really whether the DA is 1.2 points behind or 3.2. It’s that the ANC is fighting to stay above 30% in a country it once ran with two-thirds majorities. That’s the collapse of a franchise, and you don’t need an anonymous poll to see it.As for “neck and neck”? Jack Miller has been receiving that message for nineteen years. This is just the first time it’s come with decimal points..DA within 1.2% of overtaking ANC as South Africa’s largest party.By Ashor SarupenSouth Africa is on the brink of a historic political breakthrough.The latest national polling places the Democratic Alliance at 28.4%, just 1.2 percentage points behind the ANC on 29.6%. The gap between the two parties has narrowed to the point where the DA is now within striking distance of becoming South Africa’s largest political party.The DA is also on track to emerge as the largest party in many of South Africa’s major metros, and if DA voters get out and vote, we could achieve majorities in many places.For the first time in our democratic history, the prospect of the DA overtaking the ANC is not a distant ambition. It is within reach.This is a remarkable moment for South Africa. The ANC’s decades-long dominance is collapsing, and millions of South Africans are looking to the DA as a credible alternative that can govern, deliver and get municipalities working for all.Across the country, the DA is competing to win in every community, and South Africans are ready to place their confidence in a party with a proven record of delivery.The local government elections on 4 November present an opportunity to translate this momentum into a historic electoral result.A strong performance would not only position the DA to lead governments in more municipalities, but would also lay the foundation for the DA to become South Africa’s largest political party nationally in 2029.This election is about more than which party finishes first. It is about demonstrating that South Africa can move beyond the failures of the ANC and the instability of chaotic coalitions.It is about building municipalities that work, delivering reliable services for all, creating an environment for investment and jobs, and putting honest, accountable government at the centre of public life.The DA has shown what is possible where we govern. We now have an opportunity to bring that standard of government to more communities across South Africa.The latest polling confirms just how competitive this election has become. The difference between the DA and the ANC is now so small that the final outcome will be determined by the choices South Africans make at the ballot box.South Africa is entering a new political era. The DA is closer than ever to becoming the country’s largest party, and the opportunity for change has never been greater.On 4 November, South Africans have an opportunity to make history and open a new chapter of opportunity for all.In this election, your DA vote can get more of South Africa’s towns and cities working for everyone than ever before..*Ashor Sarupen, DA National Campaign Manager.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

“Neck and neck”: the DA’s oldest text message, now with decimals

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Three polls, one story: ANC slides, DA leads Joburg and Tshwane, MK rules eThekwini