South Africans will cast their votes on Wednesday. (South Africans will cast their votes on Wednesday. (Darren Stewart/Gallo Images)

• For the first time since 2019, political parties in the Western Cape face concerns over voter turnout.
• According to the IEC, 3.3 million people have registered to vote in the Western Cape.
• Find everything you need to know about the 2024 general elections on News24’s Elections Hub.

For the first time since the 2019 general elections, political parties in the Western Cape are confronting a significant challenge as concerns over voter turnout loom ahead of the upcoming polls.

This year, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa’s (IEC) registration statistics, 3 310 798 people have registered to vote in the Western Cape, with Cape Town accounting for just more than two million, followed by Drakenstein, with 137 000 voters, and then George and Stellenbosch, with just more than 100 000 registered voters.

Ipsos, in a recent poll on voter turnout models, listed three possible scenarios.

Should the current trends hold, a low voter turnout scenario – in which only the most committed voters participate – could see between 41 and 43% of registered voters heading to the polls.

In a medium turnout scenario, the model indicates the voter turnout rate may be between 57 and 59%. 

On the high end, Ipsos’ projections suggest as many as 74 to 76% of registered voters could cast their ballots if voter enthusiasm reaches its peak.

Political analyst Daniel Silke said: “One would really expect that, given the competitive nature of this election, with a multitude of political parties and new players on the political scene combined, with the depth of feeling about where South Africa is as a country, and where it should be going in future, that this certainly should aid the number of South Africans going to vote.”

Silke added that he thought the voters’ roll would be higher.

He said: 

“And if there is, as I would suspect, a particular interest in voters in determining their future, and reacting to the issues that disturb them through governance over the last decade or so, then they will come out to vote in greater numbers than ever before.

“Therefore, I think we will have … a healthier percentage poll of voters voting tomorrow [Wednesday], which is, of course, positive for our democracy,” he said.

According to the IEC, the voters’ roll had grown across elections, with 26.7 million registered to vote in 2019, and preliminary data showing there were 27.67 million registered voters for 2024.

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Political analyst Sanusha Naidoo said: “For this election, I do not think that we’re going to get anything more than 18 million. And even then I’m being very optimistic.”  

According to Naidoo, the challenge for voters in this election was the three ballot papers. 

Associate Professor Collette Schulz-Herzenberg, of Stellenbosch University, said she did not feel the three ballot papers would deter voters.

“A big factor that demotivates voters is that many South Africans do not feel close to parties and, in a sense, emotionally connected to them. I believe that people have become detached,” she told News24.