Every result here is published by the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). Almost all of it comes from the IEC's online results system, the same data as its own results site, results.elections.org.za. ESP is independent of the IEC and doesn't change any figure.

A few things come from documents the IEC publishes:

• 1994 elections: the IEC's published 1994 results, because 1994 isn't in its results system.
• 2026 candidates: the IEC's certified candidate list (16 Sept 2026), until the IEC's results system publishes 2026 candidates. We show 136 718 candidates across 4 485 wards and the party lists. The IEC's published total is 136 790; its list has 136 722 rows, and 4 of them have no candidate name, so they aren't shown.
• 2026 voting stations: 23 696 stations (name, address and location) from the IEC's voting station list for the 2026 local elections. Station names and addresses are shown for 2026 only: the IEC's lists for earlier elections carry today's names (for example "Gqeberha" in 1999), so they can't be shown as those elections' stations.
• Maps: each election's own voting-district boundaries from the IEC's map service where it has them (2021, 2019 and 1999), otherwise the IEC's 2026 voting districts. 2024 pages use the 2021 shapes, because 2024 was held on the 2021 wards. Every map says which boundaries it uses. The 1994 and 1999 province boundaries are drawn from the IEC's 1999 voting districts and the Municipal Demarcation Board's 2000 wards.

Last updated from the IEC: 29 Oct 2026, 15:35 SAST.

Some figures are sums or percentages of IEC figures. The page they're on says so.

• Ward results in national and provincial elections, and ward PR results in local elections: the IEC publishes these per voting district, so a ward's result is the sum of its voting districts.
• Percentages are each party's share of the valid votes the IEC counted.
• Turnout in national and provincial elections is the IEC's own figure. Where it doesn't match the IEC's counts of votes cast and registered voters, we calculate it from those counts instead.
• Turnout in local elections is calculated: PR ballots cast ÷ registered voters, from the IEC's voting-district results (every voter casts one PR ballot). The IEC's own local-election turnout figure isn't comparable from year to year (in 2006 it counts every ballot paper, so it is over 100% in most places; for 2000 it publishes none), so each page quotes it beside the calculated one.
• Votes cast in local elections are counted per ballot (ward, PR and DC 40%); a figure across ballots is the sum of the ballots.

Before a page shows results, we check them: votes add up to the IEC's totals, valid plus spoilt ballots equal votes cast, and seats add up to the seats available. A page that fails isn't shown. Smaller inconsistencies in the IEC's own figures are explained on the page they affect, never hidden or quietly corrected.

More about ballots, turnout and voting districts: questions and terms.

Spotted a figure that doesn't match the IEC, or have a question about these results? Email support@esp.info and tell us the page you were on.