LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: ANC and DA in Dead Heat Across Key Metros as MK Dominates eThekwini

The latest Ipsos Pulse of the People omnibus poll, the country’s largest, reveals a head-to-head contest between the ANC and DA in four metros, with the ANC slightly ahead in Johannesburg at 31% to the DA’s Helen Zille at 27%.The current national result for the poll is: ANC 31%; DA 25%; MK 14% (and now reliably South Africa’s third-largest party); EFF (11%); Action SA (6% and doing well in the Gauteng metros); IFP (3%) and the Patriotic Alliance (PA) at 2% (both the DA and PA say Ipsos under-polls for their parties).Polling figures, released on Friday, 4 September, also show that the DA is ahead with 31% of those polled against the ANC’s 22% in Tshwane. The political capital could go blue, according to both internal DA polls and now the Ipsos numbers.The Social Research Foundation has found that the DA is polling higher in Johannesburg, but its phone poll of urban residents is smaller.The four metros where the ANC and DA are close, according to Ipsos, are Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, Nelson Mandela Bay and Buffalo City. In eThekwini, MK is projected for a victory, with 55% of those surveyed saying they would vote for the party of former president Jacob Zuma. The 3,500-person in-home survey asks those who said they intended to vote for, if an election were held tomorrow. The ANC’s urban decline has been well studied and is confirmed in the poll. Its strongholds are now decidedly rural. The party polled highest in Limpopo (58%) and the Eastern Cape (56%). The DA, which dominates in Western Cape, is now also emerging as larger than the ANC in a second province: the Free State. The Free State is ravaged by poor service delivery.“Party contestation over the next two months in almost every province will be fierce,” said Ipsos director of public affairs, the political analyst Mari Harris.“The DA is doing well in the Western Cape (as expected), but in other provinces, it needs a good campaign to reap results. MK features strongly in KZN, but not anywhere else in the country; the EFF is making inroads into Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape features well in the stronghold of Limpopo. Action SA comes through strongly in Gauteng; the IFP features well in KZN but not anywhere else, and the PA is a factor in the Western Cape,” she said.With two months to go, Harris said parties could still influence outcomes by getting their voters to the polls on 4 November. Voter turnout for incumbents is lower on local election polling day, while opposition voters are more motivated to go out and make their X. The best news in the poll is that the intention to vote is increasing, especially in the metro areas, even though registration numbers were not as strong as hoped. But the overall trend is of concern, said Harris.“The proportion of registered voters saying that they will not vote in the LGEs is extremely relevant to all would-be councillors,” she said. DMMargin of error“The margin of error, dependent on sample size, response rate and sampling methodology, at a 95% confidence level and a response rate of 50% is a maximum of ±1.77% for the sample of registered voters as a whole. “However, when those who have indicated that they are not going to vote are excluded and the sample is then divided into provinces and metropolitan areas, the margins of error for the smaller sample sizes increase. “The table below is an illustration of the maximum margins or error for the different provincial samples and metropolitan samples – at a 95% confidence level and a response rate of 50%. “Some of the findings should thus be regarded as indicative (in orange below) or should be used with caution (in red below),” Ipsos said.