A calm before the storm or just another quiet(ish) election campaign season?

Assessing the election season’s energy level in a country as big and diverse as ours may well be impossible. Accordingly, gauging whether this election is so far duller than previous elections may be a fool’s errand. Additionally, voters’, journalists’ and politicians’ memories of previous elections will probably relate to the final days, when parties are pushing the hardest, not of the many somewhat boring months before the fires are properly started.

All that said, before parties began campaigning in these polls it was assumed that these elections and the campaigning would likely be more energetic than any elections since 1994, particularly because of the ANC’s decline and the possibility of new parties entering national and provincial governments.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Elections 2024

So far, this expected heightened level of conflict to reflect the importance of the elections has not really happened.

There may be several reasons for this failure to strongly engage.

The first is that it can sometimes appear as if different parties, and their leaders, are speaking only to their base constituencies. This means that instead of parties having arguments between themselves about the same three or four issues, they are speaking directly to their own constituencies about issues that sometimes narrowly apply to them.

The result: no real arguments about the same issues between different political players, no clash of ideas, no heated exchanges.

This may be another demonstration that different groups in our society are moving further apart, and more evidence of our ever weakening social cohesion.

At the same time, it seems clear we are in a process of political transition, away from the ANC’s dominance over the great majority of our public life. It may be, though, that party political leaders are not certain which direction voters will take. 

Often, they are not sure what is going to happen, and what voters appear to be wanting.

This may make it difficult for political leaders to know what to do. One might have a sense of them on a raft in a patch of calm sea, unsure which direction to start paddling in. And until they know which direction the wave is going, they don’t know where, and when, to start paddling.

This may encourage politicians to stick as closely as they can to what they have done in the past, in the hope that this will lead to the same result. Or at least ensure that they cling to their already loyal constituency.

To sum this up, it may be quite difficult at the moment to assess where the floating voter in the middle of our politics is.

This is also reflected in some of the polling, where polls have come up with different findings about the views of the electorate.

End of an era