A five-point national gap now separates the Democratic Alliance from the African National Congress, and the DA is treating that margin as an asset to be converted into outright metro majorities. A News24/SABI poll places the party within five points of the ANC and ranks it the most favourably viewed among voters polled, with the best net favourability score of any party tested. The findings land weeks before election day, when metro contests will translate directly into control of municipal governments, and with them the budgets, service operations and delivery machinery those governments run.
Momentum, in the party’s telling, is only worth what it converts into. In a statement, the DA said it would spend the next month working relentlessly to win as many outright majorities as possible. The economic logic is explicit: political stability is the precondition for municipal delivery, and outright control is the cleanest way to secure it.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.da.org.za/2026/10/da-momentum-is-building-and-now-we-must-turn-it-into-majorities.
The metro-level findings sketch where the contest is most competitive. The DA leads across every metro surveyed except eThekwini. In Tshwane, it holds an eight-point lead over the ANC. In Johannesburg, Helen Zille leads the mayoral race. Cape Town offers a different reading: voters there are markedly more positive about the direction of their city than about the direction of South Africa as a whole, a split between local and national sentiment that stands out in the data.
What changed: the numbers matter less as a snapshot than as a measure of competitive position. A five-point national gap, leads across the metros surveyed and a favourability advantage give the party a case to put to voters weighing stability against coalition bargaining. On the party’s reading, the poll is not simply a popularity measure but a gauge of which contender voters believe can keep municipal operations running. Converting that position into seats is now the task the DA has set itself for the final month of the campaign.
Behind the push for single-party control lies an argument about the cost of political instability. Councils, the statement notes, have collapsed into instability, marked by endless political bargaining and governments that spend more time fighting over positions than fixing roads, collecting refuse or keeping communities safe. “We cannot afford another five years of that,” the party said. The claim amounts to a case about governance risk: fragmented councils impose a running cost on basic service delivery, and an outright majority removes the uncertainty of coalition bargaining.
The party’s prescription is turnout. Every DA supporter, the statement urges, must vote on election day, because a clear majority means a stable government that can get straight to work delivering for residents. The appeal is paired with a broader reading of the electorate: a real political shift is underway, the DA argues, with more voters looking beyond the old politics of decline and toward a party with a record of getting things done. The election, in that framing, is a choice between governing certainty and continued bargaining.
Confidence is tempered with discipline. “We will take nothing for granted,” the statement concludes, committing the party to fight for every ward, every community and every vote across the remaining weeks of the campaign, in pursuit of the strongest possible mandate to make South Africa work for everyone. Whether a five-point gap and metro leads hold through election day, and whether they translate into the outright majorities the party is betting its campaign on, will determine who operates the metros for the next five years.