Black South Africans Now Drive Over a Third of DA Support, Survey Shows

Thirty-six percent. That single figure, drawn from a July survey by The Common Sense and the Social Research Foundation, quietly dismantles one of South African politics’ most durable myths: that the Democratic Alliance is, at its core, a white party.

The survey asked respondents which party they would vote for if an election were held immediately. When DA support was broken down by race, the picture that emerged was sharply at odds with the conventional narrative. Black South Africans alone account for 36% of DA support, a share marginally higher than white support for the party. Widen the lens to include Coloured and Indian South Africans alongside black voters, and that combined share climbs to 65%. The party’s traditional white constituency now represents just over a third of its total support base.

Gabriel Makin, commenting on the findings, did not mince words about the cost of getting this wrong. “South Africa perpetuates myths about its people and their politics and their beliefs and positions, and these often do great damage to the country as they drive narratives of great division. But more often than not, the data show a very different picture of people who are able to come together across lines of historical divides where their interests intersect,” he said.

What binds DA voters across racial lines, Makin argued, is not identity. It is economic class. Middle-class South Africans of any background now gravitate toward the party because they see it as serving their interests. “If you are a middle-class South African, you now likely vote for the DA because it is clear to you how that party advances your interests. It does not matter much whether you are black or white or ex-African National Congress,” he noted.

By contrast, the fragmented landscape beyond the DA reveals a different logic. The ANC retains a national lead, the DA trails by roughly 10 points, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party follows behind the DA, and the Economic Freedom Fighters occupy the smallest share. That splintered picture is routinely read through a racial lens. Makin argued that reading is simply incorrect.

“That broader vote is still misdiagnosed as a racial vote, but the analysis is wrong there. It is an interests vote, and what that broader base has in common on interests is that it is relatively poor and is looking for a political option to address that,” he said. The mobility implied in his analysis is striking: “As soon as that changes and a person breaks into the middle class, their vote begins to lean to the DA.”

The framework Makin describes places economic position, not historical racial category, at the center of South African political alignment. For voters outside the middle class, the DA has not yet made a convincing case for how it would protect their economic stakes, leaving them distributed across parties that claim to speak to poverty and inequality.

The open question, then, is whether the DA can extend that case downward, or whether its growth will remain bounded by the economic ceiling of the class it already serves.