This is going to be an interesting election year.

The latest polls of voter intent for the upcoming elections suggest that the ANC might no longer have the majority support that they’ve held since the first democratic elections back in 1994.

According to the SA Institute of Race Relations (IRR), the ANC’s national support base has dropped by a shocking 7,4% from the 2014 general elections, which means that it could completely lose the Gauteng province to a coalition government.

The Citizen reports that the ruling party’s approval rating has dropped by 1,3% to 54,7% since a December survey that put it at 56%.

Here’s the bad news:

The IRR’s head of politics and governance, Gareth van Onselen, attributed the ANC support decrease “almost exclusively to the EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters]”.

He said: “The ANC and the EFF are locked in a battle between 5% and 10% of alienated black ANC voters.

“Where those voters end up on May 8 will go some way towards determining the fate of these two parties,” Van Onselen said.

“Initially and on the back of [former president] Jacob Zuma’s disastrous electoral impact, they had shifted almost entirely to the EFF,” he said. “The EFF appears to be the only opposition party able to make direct and significant inroads into the ANC’s support. The backbone of the EFF national support is to be found in Gauteng.”

Great. Keep in mind that the EFF and their leader Julius Malema have been involved in some shady stuff, especially when it comes to their treatment of women.

Take the recent incident involving journalist Karima Brown.

Julius Malema shared a WhatsApp message from the journo which included her cell number. Naturally, EFF supporters started a violent campaign against her. Here’s the Citizen once more:

Malema published the cellphone number of Brown and shortly thereafter his supporters began a barrage of insults against her – calling her, among other derogatory names, ‘an Indian whore and bitch’ and levelling insults, threatening her life, and accusing her of allegedly sending moles to spy on them.

Displaying all the class and human decency of a turd on a trash pile, Malema has refused to apologise or call off his dogs. Read this open letter to the party if you’d like to know more about their questionable gender politics.

You could also watch the first five minutes of this video from Parliament yesterday, where EFF MP Hlengiwe Octavia Mkhaliphi was removed:

Even the women within the party ranks hate women.

Back to the polls:

The Democratic Alliance (DA) is now at 21.8% nationally, which is up from 18% in the IRR’s December study. The DA secured 22.2% of the vote in 2014.

According to the new study, Julius Malema’s EFF still has popular support and has increased its following by 5.9%, at 12.2% nationally, compared to 6.3% in 2014. This number was up 1.2% from December.

If the results of the survey are realised, we could be looking at a coalition battle:

Van Onselen, in his analysis, supported this view saying: “All three big parties, ANC, DA and EFF, appear to be able to form a majority coalition. The ANC and EFF and the EFF and DA and even the ANC and DA,” he said.

The IRR said the DA’s support in the Western Cape was on a knife-edge at 50.1%, which represented a drop of 9.3% from 2014.

Alastair McAlpine – that amazing paediatrician who shared those tear-jerker stories last year – summed the whole EFF mess up in one accurate tweet:

{Julius Malema farts}

EFF Twitter:
‘Leadership! ✊✊’
‘We are led!’
‘CIC has spoken!’
‘Okasalayo’
‘We don’t care. We voting EFF!’
‘Stratcom!’
(Proceeds to verbally threaten a female journalist)@EFFSouthAfrica #EFF

— Alastair McAlpine (@AlastairMcA30) March 7, 2019

Brace yourselves, people – it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

[source:citizen&citizen]