Focusing on women key to challenging ANC’s hold on power, IRR polling shows

The political party “that can make economic opportunity and household security part of the same credible offer will have found a route into one of the ANC’s most important remaining electoral advantages”.

This is one of the key insights to emerge from the latest report from the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), IRR Polling 2026: The Political State of Play – SA's Women Voters 2021-2026, published today.

Drawing on six years of IRR polling covering the entire current local government cycle, from 2021 to 2026, the report provides one of the most detailed longitudinal examinations yet of South Africa’s female electorate, tracking how women’s political preferences, priorities, and attitudes have changed through a period of profound political upheaval.

Details were shared in a webinar today presented by Hermann Pretorius, author of the IRR’s polling reports since 2024.

Analysis of IRR polling results shows that women “remain consistently more likely than men to support the ANC, even as female support for the party has fallen sharply. In the IRR’s 2026 polling, the ANC led the DA by 11 points among women (37% to 26%) but by only 1 point among men (27% to 26%).”

Pretorius writes: “Race, township residence, welfare preference, and current satisfaction considerations do not adequately explain this observable gender difference. The clearest pattern with the most credible explanatory scope in the polling is greater female economic exposure and greater political weight placed on household security.”

Among the key findings, the results show that “[e]conomic insecurity is more common among women voters. In 2026, 80% of women who reported their household income lived on less than R8,000 a month, compared with 70% of men”, and that “[w]omen overwhelmingly want a government focused on job creation over welfare dependency. In 2026, 82% of women said government should focus more on creating jobs than on social grants.”

Pretorius observes: “The implication for competing parties is therefore more demanding than simply winning an argument about growth, taxes or government competence. Women already show considerable support for jobs, education and economic reform.

“The harder task is to convince them that political change will also strengthen the security of the household, children and dependants, health care and basic services. The party that can make economic opportunity and household security part of the same credible offer will have found a route into one of the ANC’s most important remaining electoral advantages.”

In its conclusion, the report notes: “For three decades [the ANC] has linked its political identity to the expansion of housing, electricity, water and other parts of the social floor, while female-headed households were among those that experienced significant gains in several of these areas. The polling cannot prove that these memories directly cause an individual woman to vote ANC today, but the pattern is consistent with a form of political credit that survives disappointment with the government’s current performance.

“That helps explain why the ANC can continue to perform better among women even as its overall support falls.”

With South Africa entering an increasingly competitive political era, and the 4 November Local Government Elections little more than two months away, the political support of women voters is likely to prove decisive in determining the country’s political direction.

Media contact: Hermann Pretorius IRR Head of Strategic Communications Tel: 079 875 4290 Email: hermann@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris IRR head of media Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za