Polling and power: How Western backing may influence South African elections

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Western-backed organisations such as IPSOS, the Social Research Foundation and Brenthurst Foundation allegedly have been instrumental in shaping political narratives, and are accused of skewing public opinion to favour specific outcomes. This manipulation is not just a local concern, but mirrors global scepticism towards polling practices where similar patterns of inaccuracy and bias have been identified.

New political parties like ActionSA have voiced frustrations with how traditional polling underestimates their electoral impact. Despite predictions to the contrary, ActionSA’s performance in elections has consistently exceeded poll-based expectations, indicating a systemic undervaluation of emerging political entities.

The 2019 election serves as a case study in these issues. The South African Institute of Race Relations provided polling data that significantly underestimated the ANC’s actual electoral performance while overestimating the DA’s, a discrepancy that could be perceived as an attempt to influence voter expectations and electoral outcomes. Such instances underscore the potential for polls to be used as tools of political engineering rather than objective measures of public sentiment.

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