The latest forecasting for the 2016 Municipal Elections shows that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), which was contracted by the SABC, was spot on with its election predictions.

CSIR Principal Researcher and election forecasting team leader, Dr Peter Schmitz, recalled that the first predictions came through between 4:00 and 5:00 on Thursday, 4 August 2016 and were reasonably accurate.

"At this stage, only 5 to10% of voting districts had declared their results, although there were large parts of the country where no votes had come through at all. We were able to pick out that the African National Congress (ANC) would lose sole control of certain Metros, namely, Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay," Schmitz said. "We were also spot on in predicting that the Democratic Alliance (DA) would be the largest party in Nelson Mandela Bay, but not have an outright majority."

In general, the model performed extremely well and from an early stage, the CSIR was able to identify major trends and the overall results of the election.

"We were able to predict the inversion of the current state in Johannesburg (where the DA was in a comfortable lead), in Tshwane and in Ekurhuleni, where the DA was at 50% and we came within a percentage point of predicting the final ANC tally of 48.9%. In Tshwane, our prediction was close to accurate, but the parties switched as shown in the table below."

In the Nelson Mandela Bay, where the DA was at almost 60%, the CSIR came within 1.8 percentage points of the final tally of 46.6%. "Importantly, we were able to call the general result of no overall winner in these four metros."

"Finally, with absolutely no information available, our prediction for eThekwini was remarkably accurate," he concluded. The table below shows the predictions and the final results for the eight metros. 

The CSIR Election Team was made up of the following people: Dr Zaid Kimmie (CSIR Institutional Planning), Dr Peter Schmitz (CSIR Built Environment), Dr Ndumiso Cingo (CSIR Institutional Planning), Mbulelo Ntlangu (CSIR Modelling and Digital Science), Tyrone Naidoo (CSIR Modelling and Digital Science), Jenny Holloway (CSIR Built Environment), Nontembeko Dudeni-Thlone (CSIR Built Environment), Sumarie Meintjies (CSIR Built Environment), Luyanda Vappie (CSIR Institutional Planning), Paul Mokilane (CSIR Built Environment), Quintin van Heerden (CSIR Built Environment) and Hans Ittmann (consultant and former CSIR Built Environment Executive Director). Nyalleng Moorosi and Ofentswe Lebogo, from CSIR Modelling and Digital Science, did some social media analysis on the elections for the SABC.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Mr Tendani Tsedu, CSIR Media Relations Manager on 012 841 3417/ 082 945 1980 or MTsedu@csir.co.za

About the CSIR

The CSIR is one of the leading scientific and technology research, development and implementation organisations in Africa. Constituted by an Act of Parliament in 1945 as a science council, the CSIR undertakes directed and multidisciplinary research, technological innovation as well as industrial and scientific development to improve the quality of life of the country's people. For more info, please visit http://www.csir.co.za/about_us.html