If you compare pictures of Julius Malema now to pictures from a few years back, it’s clear that the EFF leader hasn’t been eating much at all.

Malema has shed some serious weight, but it also seems he has gained much of the ANC’s floundering support, according to the latest poll by the Institute for Race Relations (IRR).

Times LIVE say that the new numbers show “that Julius Malema is eating Cyril Ramaphosa’s lunch”, with the EFF doubling its support since the 2014 general elections.

The poll was conducted between August 22 and September 4, and spoke to slightly fewer than 1 000 registered voters, which seems to me like a rather small sample.

Anyway, let’s go to those numbers:

The poll said party support countrywide is as follows:

• The EFF is polling at 13%

• The ANC is polling at 52%

• The DA is polling at 23%

For a point of reference, here are 2014’s general election results, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa:

Sounds like bad news for the DA, who would have hoped that the majority of the 10% of voters abandoning the ANC would head in their direction.

BusinessTech with a few reasons why that has been the case:

The survey showed that the EFF…has won over many disenchanted ANC supporters with its push to force the ruling party to adopt populist policies, such as expropriating land without compensation, said Gareth van Onselen, the SAIRR’s head of politics and governance.

“Alienated black ANC voters have responded to the EFF’s ability to dominate ANC policy and, already favorable to the EFF, chosen to align with it rather than the ANC,” he said.

“It means that the ANC’s strategic decision to nullify the EFF by attempting to pander to and adopt its policies has backfired dramatically.”

It might also mean that all of the infighting within the ANC has voters tired, even if it looks like Ramaphosa’s support within the party itself is strengthening.

Here are the full results from the latest IRR poll:

It wasn’t just number-crunching, because the IRR poll also raised some other interesting angles:

• No party is on course to win an outright majority in the central Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg, the economic hub, and Pretoria, the capital.
• A lack of jobs, drug abuse and crime were seen by respondents as the three most pressing issues the government needed to tackle.
• Addressing land reform was considered the lowest of 13 possible priorities suggested by the institute, despite the issue having dominated public discourse over recent months.

That last one is pretty interesting, although good luck pointing that out on Twitter.

[sources:timeslive&businesstech]