Turnout: 66.05%
About this election
The South African general election of 8 May 2019 was the sixth since the advent of democracy in 1994 and the first held under Cyril Ramaphosa, who had replaced Jacob Zuma as president fifteen months earlier. The governing African National Congress (ANC) won a sixth consecutive national majority but recorded its worst result to that point — 57.50% of the National Assembly vote and 230 of the 400 seats — as voters delivered a verdict on a decade marked by corruption scandals, economic stagnation and the "state capture" affair. The election confirmed both the ANC's continuing dominance and the steady erosion of its support.
South Africa uses closed-list proportional representation to elect its 400-member National Assembly, which then chooses the president. Half the seats are allocated from a national list and half from nine provincial lists, using the largest-remainder method with no minimum threshold, so even very small parties can win a seat. The same day, voters also elect the nine provincial legislatures on a separate ballot. The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) administers the process. Because the president is elected by parliament rather than directly, a party's National Assembly share is the single most important number in South African politics — and in every election from 1994 to 2019 that share belonged, by an absolute majority, to the ANC.
Ramaphosa campaigned on a promise of a "New Dawn" — rooting out the corruption associated with his predecessor, reviving investment and cleaning up state-owned enterprises, above all the debt-laden power utility Eskom, whose load-shedding had returned during the campaign. The Democratic Alliance (DA), led by Mmusi Maimane, sought to expand beyond its Western Cape base and present itself as a clean, competent alternative. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the radical-left party founded by Julius Malema after his expulsion from the ANC, campaigned aggressively on land expropriation without compensation and nationalisation, targeting younger and poorer black voters. Issues of land reform, unemployment, inequality and corruption dominated the contest.
The ANC won 10,026,475 votes (57.50%, 230 seats), down more than four points from 2014 and the first time it had dipped below 60%. The DA took 20.77% and 84 seats, a slight decline that triggered internal turmoil and Maimane's eventual resignation. The clear winner in momentum was the EFF, which almost doubled its support to 10.80% and 44 seats. The Inkatha Freedom Party held 3.38% (14 seats) and the Afrikaner-oriented Freedom Front Plus surged to 2.38% (10 seats), benefiting from minority anxiety over land policy. Turnout fell to 66.05% — then the lowest of the democratic era — and abstention among registered young voters was especially marked. The ANC carried eight of the nine provinces; the DA retained the Western Cape, while Gauteng saw the ANC scrape just over half the vote.
The National Assembly elected Cyril Ramaphosa to a full term as president on 22 May 2019. His government promised faster reform, but the structural problems — unemployment near record highs, electricity shortages, weak growth and entrenched inequality — proved stubborn, and were soon compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2019 result, with the ANC's majority shrinking and the EFF and Freedom Front Plus both advancing on opposite flanks, foreshadowed the fragmentation that would cost the ANC its majority outright five years later.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.