The silent majority did not vote! Comparing population estimates with the voter roll

Over 15 million potentially eligible voters did not cast their vote in the recent local government elections. This analysis compares the mid-year population estimates with the voters role.
A development worker in Cape Town pointed out that there was a significant gap between the potential number of voters, and those on the voter’s role. It piqued my interest, and I asked a couple more community activists about this. They all confirmed the view that in their areas, the level of voter registration was low. Could this view from the ground be correct? The proposition is that they may exist – in the words of one of the community workers – “an excluded majority” not even on the voters roll. To explore this question, we have compared the voters roll with population estimates.
In sum, this exploration seeks to find out what proportion of the population are on the voter’s roll. In undertaking this analysis, only official data has been utilised. These are:

• Indepedent Electoral Commission (IEC) reports on voter turnout by province were generated using the IEC’s report generator;
• Statistics South Africa’s Mid-Year Population Estimates (2010). The cut-off point in the data is at 20, which means that potential voters between 18 and 20 are not counted in these results. Including 18-20 year olds in the analysis would potentially increase the size of the so-called “silent majority”.

 
The results of the analysis show that when comparing the voters roll to the population in South Africa over 21 years of age, there are

• Over 5 million potential voters are not on the voter’s roll.
• When combined with registered voters that did not vote, over 15 million potential voters did not make their mark in the local government elections.
• The implication is that the potential voter turnout was less than 50% (about 46%) compared to the 57,8% reported by the IEC, as shown in the graph below.

 
 
It raises questions about inclusion and exclusion that I will discuss in a follow-up article on SACSIS. For now, the data is summarised below. Subscribers to Zapreneur can download the Spreadsheet on which this analysis is based. A summary table is provided below.

Province	Registered Voters	Voters in 2011 municipal elections	Voter turnout as % of registered voters	Registered but did not vote	Population over 20	Voter Turnout as % of over 20 population)	Total potential voters that did not vote (Adds together potential voters that are not on the voters roll with registered voters that did not vote)
Eastern Cape	3111535	1813802	58.3	1297733	3694045	49.1	1880243
Free State	1386521	767321	55.3	619200	1705147	45	937826
Gauteng	5592676	3127671	55.9	2465005	7316053	42.8	4188382
KwaZulu-Natal	4648733	2865855	61.6	1782878	5912289	48.5	3046434
Limpopo	2340799	1172855	50.1	1167944	2860560	41	1687705
Mpumalanga	1718309	960748	55.9	757561	2028150	47.4	1067402
North West	1576898	845093	53.6	731805	1855014	45.6	1009921
Northern Cape	572140	363361	63.5	208779	663546	54.8	300185
Western Cape	2706736	1748208	64.6	958528	3226121	54.2	1477913
Total	23654347	13664914	57.8	9989433	29260925	46.7	15596011
Source	IEC	IEC	IEC		Statistic South Africa