The 2024 national and provincial elections brought about a new era of national coalition governance. For the first time since 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) failed to secure an outright majority at the polls, dropping its vote share from 57.5% in 2019 to 40.2% in 2024, leading to the creation of a coalition government.
While the decline in the support for the ANC had been predicted by several polls preceding the election, the scale of the loss was surprising to many and seemed to represent shifts in voting patterns. While the 2024 elections provided some of the significant shifts in voting patters since democratic elections began, voter fluidity-people shifting their votes from one election to the next-has been a growing trend among the South African electorate.
