LOCAL ELECTIONS 2026: Five Tshwane polls give DA an edge in coalition negotiations

Tshwane is the sole Gauteng metro where DA-led coalitions enjoyed an almost unbroken run from the 2016 local government election until mid-2024. There was a period of eight months where the metro was taken under administration – illegally, according to the Constitutional Court – and one or two scares when smaller coalition parties swapped sides for a few weeks. 

Other than that, the metro has been the DA’s to lose. ActionSA was a critical partner in any post-2021 coalition, and the party severed ties with the DA after the 2024 national and provincial elections. For the last two years, Tshwane has been run by an ANC-EFF-led coalition that has included ActionSA.

Tshwane is also the metro with the smallest share of seats going to smaller parties, but smaller parties have been key to any coalition over the last five years. Recent polls confirm that small parties, including the PA, may yet be kingmakers after next week’s election.

These bar charts summarise the results of five polls held between June and October.

All the polls have the DA in first place and the ANC in second, but only the first poll from The Common Sense/Social Research Foundation gives the DA more than a third of the vote. The News24/Sabi and eNCA/Markdata polls have the EFF in third place and ActionSA in fourth, while the other polls reverse the order. The FF+ is also an important player in Tshwane and has traditionally voted with the DA. 

The Ipsos poll demonstrates how both the ANC and DA will have to work to build a majority coalition. 

The poll has both camps far away from a majority but appears to allocate far too many seats to “other parties”, even when the FF+’s seats are subtracted from the total. This has much to do with Ipsos’s methodology: the “other” seats include the shares of respondents who may not vote or who haven’t made a choice. 

The first Common Sense/Social Research Foundation poll gives the DA 10 more percentage points of the vote than any other poll, making it easy enough to form a coalition with the FF+.

The last three polls yielded very similar results for the big parties with one or two differences in the seat allocations for the EFF and the FF+. In aggregate, the DA-FF+ coalition has a few more seats than the ANC-EFF coalition and ActionSA is the kingmaker that could set up either coalition.

In some scenarios a DA-ActionSA-FF+ coalition is a clear majority, in others it needs a boost from smaller parties. In most cases an ANC-EFF-ActionSA coalition still needs help from smaller parties. 

The News24/Sabi poll puts the current ANC-EFF-ActionSA-PA coalition within reach of the majority threshold, leaving it just three seats shy of a ruling coalition. 

These seats would have to come from the smaller parties. If the DA and ActionSA reconciled, a DA-ActionSA-FF+ coalition would also need seats from the same pool of parties.

With the seat allocation implied by the eNCA/Markdata poll and the help of ActionSA, a DA-FF+ coalition would have an easy majority, while the current ANC-EFF-ActionSA-PA coalition would need one more seat from smaller parties.

The second The Common Sense/Social Research Foundation poll tells a similar story to the eNCA/Markdata one, except it’s even better for the DA. The DA-FF+ coalition has at least a seven-seat lead on the ANC and EFF, even if the PA seats are included. ActionSA would hand the DA an easy majority whereas the ANC would still need to hunt for a few more seats. 

All of these scenarios operate under the same general assumptions: the DA won’t work with the EFF or the PA, and neither the ANC nor the DA want anything to do with the MK party. Of course, the spectre of a DA-ANC coalition lurks in the background.

The DA-FF+ coalition might have a bit more momentum than the ANC-EFF-PA one, but those extra five or 10 seats could be statistical noise. According to the polls, ActionSA remains the deciding factor, but a lot has happened in the past month to hurt the party’s chances.

With hundreds of residents falling ill from contaminated water, the current coalition partners are blaming each other and taking their eyes off the campaign work. ActionSA’s role in future coalitions might shrink, and the DA could still pull ahead. DM