DA premier candidate in the Western Cape, Alan Winde, stated on Thursday that the early results from voting stations indicated the province was not headed for a coalition government.
Also read: DA leads Western Cape, ANC support declines
‘I am feeling confident that we are not going to have a coalition in the Western Cape,’ Winde remarked in an interview at the provincial results centre in Cape Town.
Just after midday, the DA was leading with 49% of the votes captured from 472 out of 1 572 voting stations.
The party collected 197 710 of the captured votes, compared to the ANC, which was trailing with 22.13% after garnering 89 280 votes.
The Patriotic Alliance was a surprise, obtaining 11.29% with 45 551 votes, while the EFF followed with 4.46% (18 011 votes). The National Coloured Congress recorded 2.24% (9 042 votes), followed by Freedom Front Plus with 1.85% (7 476 votes), GOOD Party with 1.25% (5 110 votes), and ACDP with 1.16% (4 670 votes).
New parties, including the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, Rise Mzansi, and ActionSA, recorded less than one percent of the votes, obtaining 1 695, 1 685, and 1 298 votes respectively.
Winde noted the strong voter turnout in the Western Cape.
‘I really thank them for that, especially those voters that spent many hours in the queues yesterday,’ he said.
Looking forward to his second term as premier, Winde acknowledged that it was still early, with the halfway mark count of the votes yet to be captured.
‘It is an early day as we project forward but it does not look like we are going to have a coalition in the Western Cape,’ he reiterated.
Winde stated that when the percentage of captured results stood at 25 or 35, there was a clear indication of the trends.
‘There are some areas that are interesting for me. I have seen votes coming in numbers from small towns. It is very interesting to see what is happening in the Beaufort West region and that is very encouraging for the DA,’ he said.
EFF provincial chairperson Unathi Ntame said they were comfortable with the results released so far.
‘We understand the terrain. We have our expectations and the results that are there are in line with our expectations. We know where we are strongest,’ Ntame said.
‘These are results for rural areas of the Western Cape and we generally know our performance there.
‘The big numbers of the metro are not there and other big areas, Paarl, Grabouw, Hermanus, Vredendal, and Saldanha,’ he said, adding that their numbers would start picking up.
‘We expect to see an improvement with those numbers,’ Ntame concluded.
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Picture: Ziyaad Douglas / Gallo Images