All eyes are on the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) as the results of the seventh democratic elections trickled in on Thursday.
By noon, the National Assembly results were 18.19% completed with counting in 4,086 voting districts counted from the 23,293 completed. Just over 1.9 million votes had been counted, with 25,238 spoilt votes.
The African National Congress (ANC) had 42.95% which translated to 807,370, followed by the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) 25.12% with 472,535 votes, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has 8.67% of support with 163,013 votes.
Former president Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK Party) had 8.18% (153,915 votes), while the Patriotic Alliance (PA) had 4.28% (80,572).
While it is too early to make predictions, the current ruling ANC was below the 2019 results, but maintained the lead.
At 7.40am, the National Assembly results were 8.5% completed, with counting in 1,980 voting districts counted from the 23,293 completed.
At the time, the ANC had 249,045 votes and 41.77% of the support, followed by the DA's 27.52% with 164,061 votes, and the EFF had 7.72% of support with 46,015 votes.
MK Party were next with 7.54% (44,980 votes) followed by the PA with 4.56% (27,175 votes).
In the 2019 elections, the ANC won a 57.5% majority, followed by the DA getting 20.77% and the EFF 10.8%.
Counting was delayed by voting delays countrywide. On Wednesday night, the IEC said it roped in thousands of counting officers to help mitigate long queues at the voting stations across the country.
According to the IEC, 27,782,477 South Africans were registered to vote at 23,293 voting districts. While 58,802 voters were registered out of the country.
Counting for out of country results have not started by 7am.
Counting was delayed on Wednesday, as many voting stations across the country saw people still waiting to vote hours after the stations closed at 9pm.
At just before midnight on Wednesday, the first of the results started trickling in, and the ANC had 99 (60.74%) of the 163 votes counted, followed by the EFF with 29 votes (17.79%) and the MK Party had third place, with 17 votes (10.43%).
IOL News