DA premier candidate in the Western Cape Alan Winde said on Thursday the early results captured from voting stations showed that the province was not destined for a coalition government.
“I am feeling confident that we are not going to have a coalition in the Western Cape,” Winde said in an interview at the provincial results centre in Cape Town.
Just after midday, the DA was leading with 49% of the votes captured from the 472 out of 1572 voting stations.
The party collected 197 710 of the captured votes from the voting stations compared to the ANC that was trailing behind it with 22.13% after garnering 89 280 votes.
The Patriotic Alliance was a surprise package as it obtained 11.29% after garnered 45551 votes while the EFF followed with 4.46% (18011 votes).
The National Coloured Congress recorded 2.24% (9042 votes), followed by Freedom Front Plus with 1.85% (7476 votes), GOOD Party 1.25% (5110 votes), ACDP 1.16% (4670 votes).
The new kids on the block, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, Rise Mzansi and ActionSA recorded less than one percentage of votes as they obtained 1695, 1685 and 1298 respectively.
Winde noted that the voters came out in the Western Cape.
“I really thank them for that, especially those voters that spent many hours in the queues yesterday,” he said.
Winde, who said he is looking forward to his second term as the premier, acknowledged that it was still early as the half way mark count of the votes had not been captured.
“It is an early day as we project forward but it does not look like we are going to have a coalition in the Western Cape,” he said.
Winde stated that when the percentage of captured results stood at 25 or 35, there was a clear indication of what was happening where.
“There are some areas that are interesting for me. I have seen votes coming in numbers from small towns. It is very interesting to see what is happening in the Beaufort West region and that is very encouraging for the DA,” he said.
EFF provincial chairperson Unathi Ntame said they were comfortable with the results released so far.
“We understand the terrain. We have our expectations and the results that are there are in line with our expectations. We know where we are strongest,” Ntame said.
“These are results for rural areas of the Western Cape and we generally know our performance there.
“The big numbers of the metro are not there and other big areas, Paarl, Grabouw, Hermanus, Vredendal and Saldanha,” he said, adding that their numbers would start picking up.
“We expect to see an improvement with those numbers,” Ntame said.
Cape Times