New poll puts DA on 44% in the Western Cape

While methodology and sampling details are not yet public, the recent poll released by ENCA affiliate MarkData has placed the DA at a mere 44.4%, in line with an earlier IPSOS poll from late last year, which also placed them at 44% and a Wits University poll from February which placed them at 42%.

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The new result, if reliable, opens the possibility for a broad conservative and secessionist coalition in the Western Cape, including the African Christian Democratic Party, the Vryheidsfront Plus, and the Referendum Party, all of which officially support a referendum on Cape independence.

The polls are of course not a guarantee, and the results of the Social Research Foundation are much more favourable to the DA, giving them a majority at 53%, with a margin of error of four points.

However, taken together, the various polls seem to agree that a secessionist coalition may be in the cards, as the ANC and their fellow travelers in the PA, EFF and GOOD do not make up a majority in any poll, meaning that the only way they can take control of the Western Cape is if the DA welcome them into a coalition.

The Da has been declining recently, starting with the alienation of their minority voting base during the Mmusi Maimane years, when the party tried to pivot left and embrace black nationalist policies including race quotas and land redistribution in order to garner black support, which never materialised.

In recent years, the return of Afrikaner nationalism and Coloured identity politics on the margins has mean that the DA’s traditional support base has been weakened, and with the coming of Cape independence, even the most loyal element of DA support, Anglophone white voters, have been trickling away.

What the coalition will look like after May 29th is anybody’s guess, but it is no longer a foregone conclusion that the DA will be able to stop Cape independence anymore.

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