Issued by: Ipsos Markinor


These results are from early indications in a Markinor study conducted in April and May 2007. The results are published prior to the DA’s federal congress this weekend where a new leader will be chosen, after Tony Leon’s decision to stand down as party leader well before the next general election in 2009.

A representative sample of 3 500 randomly selected South Africans from all walks of life were questioned in all regions of the country. Personal face-to-face interviews were conducted in the homes of respondents. These questions focussing on the DA leadership formed part of a much larger survey. The results are representative of the adult South African population, i.e. those 16 years and older. The sample error for this study is between 0.75% and1.65%, depending on response rate.

In the survey the issue was introduced as follows: “Now looking at the official opposition in South Africa, the DA, the Democratic Alliance. In May 2007 the leader of the DA, Tony Leon, will step down.” Thereafter this specific question was posed: “There are different candidates to take over from Tony Leon. On a scale of 10 to 0, how would you rate....where 10 means you are totally in favour of and 0 means you are totally against him or her.”

Six names were put to respondents and each respondent had to evaluate all six people on this scale. The list included the official candidates as announced in the media, as well as three prominent leaders in the current DA. The scores were:

.	General population: points out of 10	DA supporters: points out of 10
Helen Zille	4.6	7.1
Joe Seremane	3.7	4.3
Douglas Gibson	3.1	4.8
Theuns Botha	2.9	5.1
Ryan Coetzee	2.6	4.7
Athol Trollip	2.6	4.3

As can be expected DA supporters view the potential future leaders of the party quite differently from the general population. Zille still tops the list by a wide margin, but the order of preference for DA supporters is different from that of the population at large..

In fact, this score recorded for Helen Zille is better than that measured for Tony Leon in the last few years¹, and almost on par with that of the deputy president.




Regardless of who becomes the next DA leader, the party will face the formidable task of improving their leaders’ profiles: in the case of Helen Zille, 42% of those questioned indicated that they did not know her or did not know enough to express an opinion! In all other cases, between 53% and 58% indicated that they did not know the candidate or did not express an opinion about the candidate.

Concentrating on those who did express an opinion about each candidate, almost a quarter (24%) of the general adult population who rated Helen Zille gave her an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10; the corresponding figure for the next candidate, Joe Seremane, is 13%.

However, views of DA supporters in favour of Helen Zille are even stronger – 52% of those who rated her, gave an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10. No other candidate comes close to this high level of support amongs DA supporters.


¹Markinor conducts the Socio-Political Trends studies every six months, and the question about the rating of leaders of all political parties is a regular feature.

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[7 May 2007 13:05]

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