Voters overwhelmingly believe 2024 elections were free, fair: ESS

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The Elections Satisfaction Survey (ESS) results indicate that voters overwhelmingly believe that the 2024 National and Provincial Elections were free and fair with the voting public showing trust in the IEC.

However, it further shows concerning results among those who self-reported coercion in their vote.

The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) presented the outcomes of its survey on Friday at the IEC’s National Results Operations Centre in Midrand, Johannesburg.

While the general public’s trust in the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has been declining, the voting public expressed a different sentiment.

Dr Benjamin Roberts, Acting Research Director of the HSRC says, “Although the IEC does remain one of the most trusted institutions in the country the voting public, the trust is much higher, that is probably for two reasons, two dominant reasons – one is obviously the fact that many of the people, we have interviewed have come out of the voting station and had generally speaking, perhaps leaving out some aspects of the queuing time, a positive experience and that translates to a positive translation for the commission. The other one is that for many South Africans, the predominant response to unhappiness with the functioning of the political system is abstention.”

This was revealed in the HSRC Election Satisfaction Survey which assessed the opinions and perceptions of voters on Election Day. It saw 88% of interviews completed in nine provinces with a 1% margin of error.

The survey explored a number of themes including satisfaction with IEC officials, ballot papers, voter education, and self-reported coercion to name a few.

On self-reported coercion, 73% said it had no bearing on their electoral choice, 25% said it did and 2% said they were uncertain. This translated into 3% of all voters who changed their vote.

“Since the 2016 election, we have seen the reporting of the self-reporting of coercion increasing over time, it particularly jumped higher in 2019 and 2024 so it is something that we really have to watch out for, just to say that it is happening predominately before election day in households, in communities that forms of pressure, but it is something that we do need to worry about because it is translating into 3% of change relative to what they might have voted for on election day,” Roberts adds.

Outcomes of HSRC Election Satisfaction Survey

The survey consisted of a representative sample of 300 voting stations. At each station, 50 randomly selected voters were interviewed throughout the election day.

The voting stations chosen took into account provincial distribution, distribution of the registered population, and certain other attributes of the voting public. Once the data was collected, it was weighted to make sure that it is representative of the voting population.