Electoral system favours ANC winning local polls

By Steven Friedman

If you want to know why the African National Congress (ANC) will do better in next year’s local government elections than we are told, look at last week’s British elections. They will also tell you why those who call for changes to our electoral system may be horrified if they get what they want.

Some figures from the UK’s election show what happens when proportional representation is not used. The Scottish National Party (SNP), now the third-largest party with 56 seats, received just less than 5% of the vote. The Liberal Democrats received 50% more votes — 7.7% — but won only eight seats. The UK Independence Party received more than double — 12.7% — and won only one seat. The Conservatives won a majority with only 37% of the vote.

A system in which a party gets more than double the votes of a rival but wins 55 fewer seats can’t possibly be fair. But this is what happens when a "first past the post" system is used: the country is divided into geographic constituencies and the candidate who gets most votes in each is elected. In India, which uses this system, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party won the last election and became the first party for decades to win an overall majority of seats — with 31% of the vote. The Republicans won the US House of Representatives in 2012 with a minority of votes. Constituency systems are very inefficient at turning parties’ share of the vote into seats: the key often is not how many people vote for you but where constituency boundaries are drawn.

Remember this in next year’s local government elections. At its congress last week, the Democratic Alliance (DA) declared that it had targeted several metropolitan areas: it is confident it will win Nelson Mandela Bay, Tshwane and Johannesburg. Many pundits agree and it has become common to claim that the ANC is in deep trouble in all three because, in last year’s general election, it won just 49%, 51% and 53% respectively in these cities. So it seems to have lost one already and to face losing the other two if its support drops only slightly.

But, in reality, the DA has a battle on its hands to win Nelson Mandela Bay, despite the fact that the ANC won less than half the votes, and is extremely unlikely to win the other two. The reason is the electoral system.

In our local elections, only half the seats are distributed in proportion to parties’ votes: the other half are allocated to councillors elected in wards where "first past the post" is used. Because the ANC’s support lies in township wards, where most city residents live, it wins on average two-thirds of the wards in most metros. And, crucially, it won these wards last time with 75%-85% of the vote. So, if it is to lose wards, its vote in its strongholds would need to drop not by a few percentage points, but by 25-35 percentage points. A rough calculation suggests that, in Nelson Mandela Bay, where the population makeup is different from Gauteng’s, the ANC will need to drop from 49% to 40% to lose its majority — in Tshwane and Joburg, it will need to sink to about 35%. And so dividing half the seats into geographic wards makes it possible for it or any other party to govern cities with a minority of the votes.

An ANC majority in these metros, courtesy of the electoral system, seems likely even if its vote drops. The only contender for its wards now is the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), which has hardly contested by-elections since last May and did poorly in the few it fought. But even if it revives strongly, last year’s results suggest that it won’t challenge the ANC in its wards. In a constituency system, minority parties win seats only if their support is concentrated in parts of the country (or city) — witness the SNP in the UK and the Inkatha Freedom Party here, which was once the only party besides the ANC and DA that could win a constituency because its support was bunched in particular areas. The EFF’s vote isn’t and so it is unlikely to win wards from the ANC in any numbers.

Do those who want a change in our electoral system know that it may allow minorities to govern cities? And would they be eager to see the same happening in national and provincial government? Supporters of change reply that they don’t want a "first past the post" system — they want one that is mixed. But that is exactly what we have in local government. Most electoral systems are mixed: the question is what sort of mix. Those that place more stress on constituencies are poor at giving parties their fair share and so, the more we opt for constituencies, the more our chances of landing up with rule by a minority.

The next time you complain that all our representatives are chosen by parties, not voters, remember that the alternative is a system in which, for the first time since apartheid ended, our government may be elected by a minority.

• Friedman is director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy.

This article was first published in Business Day, 13 May 2015.