Voting takes place in Johannesburg's western suburbs on May 29, 2024. (Delwyn Verasamy, Mail & Guardian)
Compared to polls in 2019, fewer people were confident that their vote would be counted accurately in this week's general election.
A survey conducted by the South African Electoral Commission (IEC) in collaboration with the Human Sciences Research Council found that of 13,155 people interviewed, only 45% were confident that their votes would be counted accurately, down from 60% in 2019.
Voters who attended polling stations for the national and state elections held on Wednesday were interviewed. The aim of the survey was to capture voters' opinions and perceptions, and understand their experiences with the voting process.
The IEC said in a statement on Friday that field workers randomly selected and interviewed 50 voters at polling stations in all nine states to ensure fair representation, and that the survey had a margin of error of 1 percentage point.
According to the IEC, 12% of people surveyed reported being coerced by someone to vote for a particular party or candidate, 9% reported being coerced by a party representative, family member or friend before election day, and 4% said they were coerced while waiting in line to vote.
The commission said election officials were rarely cited as a source of electoral coercion.
According to the IEC, of those who said they had been coerced in their survey, 73 percent said it hadn't influenced their electoral choice, 25 percent said it had influenced them, and 2 percent said they weren't sure. Three percent of those surveyed said they had changed their vote.
Voter satisfaction surveys found that waiting times at polling stations were longer than in recent elections, which affected voter evaluations.
On Election Day, thousands of people waited in long lines to vote, even after polls were supposed to close at 9 p.m.
The IEC announced on Thursday that everyone had been given the opportunity to vote, with the final vote taking place earlier in the day.
Jacob Zuma's Umkhonto weSizwe party has accused the IEC of denying South Africans their constitutional right to choose their government.
In a statement on Thursday, the party called on the IEC leadership to resign and accused the commission of focusing on “persecuting and disqualifying” the former president in favour of the ANC instead of holding free and fair elections.