Election 2019: Change and Stability in South Africa's Democracy, Collette Schulz-Herzenberg and Roger Southall (Eds.) - book review

The South African national and provincial election of May 2019 was a watershed in South Africa's ongoing process of democratisation. It was also the most analysed election in the democratic era before the actual voting took place. Numerous attempts to predict the result demonstrate how high the stakes were and still are for all the parties and citizens, rich and poor, in South Africa. As is to be expected, the pollsters and their instruments failed to capture the dynamics of voting and the actual result. Of interest were alternative approaches to predicting the outcome. These entailed examining party performance in past elections (national, provincial and local as well as local by-elections) based on voting station and ward data. I dare say that these approaches got close to being accurate.