The great DA lie

The DA letter writers have been in full swing recently crowing about their successful election campaign as they respond to those suggesting that maybe the result wasn’t so great for them. This has prompted me to finally comment on what I consider a disastrous election for this white minority party.

First some history, one of the main parts of the DA election campaign was that together the coalition for change can get 30%. In the days leading up to the election this was adjusted down to 25%-30% and finally on the day before I even heard a DA member suggest that it could be 20% and still considered a success.

Then on the 18 April Douglas Gibson issued a press statement saying Democratic Alliance is the fastest growing party in SA and this has been the main thrust of the recent letter writers.

In a nutshell they’re saying that the DA grew more by number of votes and by a larger percentage then any other political party – and they are correct.

The DA got an extra +400,000 votes over the 1999 elections and in percentage terms grew by some 30% - impressive, but this conveniently hides the real truth.

Firstly in the 2000 municipal election the DA got 20.43% vs. 12.37% in 2004 and 9.56 in 1999), now fair enough that was the initial happy days of the DP/NNP merger, but the claim has been that the DA kept many of the NNP supporters when the NNP broke away and the figures no longer support this theory.

Then looking deeper at the 2004 election results, the NNP lost some 800,000 votes and so the DA couldn’t even pick up half of the disillusioned NNP voters (assuming that they got some extra black voters). Then the fact that the ANC added almost 300,000 votes whilst the IFP lost 200,000 and the UDM lost another 200,000 votes suggests that they picked up very few if any new black votes (we’re working with the assumption that these black parties get only black voters. Flawed logic I know but allow me this assumption.)

So if we’re generous we can give the DA an extra 100,000 black voters and hence only 300,000 of the old NNP voters – this is hardly a success.

The other nail in the coffin is that the coalition for change got a very modest 19.34% of the vote – less then even their lowest figure and way below the promised 30%.

So the DA failed to pick up the majority of homeless voters, they didn’t get any significant new black support and the coalition for change was an unremitting failure (witness the ANC/IFP now back in bed together in KZN).

So the spin that the DA considers the 2004 election to have been a huge success is just that – spin. Frankly the DA should be a very worried party and Farrel Lifson of Politics.za sums it nicely in his post of Thursday, 6th May when he suggests that the DA has painted itself into a corner.

Comments

[zaBlogger]

Laurence at commentary suggests that I am flawed in comparing the 2000 municipal elections to the 2004 general elections and in part he is correct.

In my defence the municipal elections comment is frankly not really the main issue that I was raising - rather the dismal performance in 2004 compared to expectations and compared to 1999.

See the comments from Laurence here