The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) told the country that 81% of voters trust it. But its own research found that only 32% of South Africans have confidence in the institution.
In KwaZulu-Natal, trust was even lower, at 20%.
IEC chairperson Mosotho Moepya cited the 81% figure on Sunday night at the official results ceremony in Midrand, moments before declaring the 2026 local government elections free and fair.
He did not disclose the 32% finding from the Commission’s earlier research.
The two figures come from separate surveys, conducted among different groups of people. But together they paint a more complicated picture of public confidence in the electoral authority than the one presented at the results ceremony.
The 81% figure comes from an Election Satisfaction Survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) among people who had just voted.
The HSRC interviewed 13,198 voters at 300 voting stations on election day.
Moepya said the survey found that electoral integrity scored 90%, the freeness and fairness of the elections 91%, and satisfaction with services provided by the Commission 95%.
It also found that 91% of voters had queued for no longer than 30 minutes.
” It also found that trust in the Electoral Commission remains high at 81%. The electoral process, the study found, retains public confidence among voters. We do not take this for granted,” Moepya said.
But the Commission’s earlier Voter Participation Survey found that trust in the IEC among the general population was just 32%.
Moepya acknowledged the findings in his speech but did not provide the trust figure.
He said the HSRC conducted the survey between October last year and February this year to establish voter sentiment ahead of the elections.
The findings showed that several public institutions, including political parties, Parliament, the judiciary and the IEC, operated in an environment of low public trust.
“The implication was clear. Unless certain intentional measures were taken, South Africans were going to go into the November 4 local government elections in a low-trust environment,” he said.
It was previously reported that the survey found trust in the IEC had fallen to 20% in KwaZulu-Natal, from 74% in 2009. The national average was 32%.
The difference between the two surveys is significant.
The election-day survey measured the views of people who had turned out to vote. It did not establish the level of confidence among those who stayed away.
The IEC put national turnout at 52% of 29.2 million registered voters. Nearly half of registered voters therefore did not participate.
The views of eligible South Africans who have not registered to vote were also not captured in the election-day survey.
Even among people who voted, trust in the Commission has declined.
According to the HSRC’s election-day findings, trust stood at 81% in 2026, down from 85% in 2024, 89% in 2021 and 93% in 2019. In 2016, it was 91%.
KwaZulu-Natal recorded the lowest level of trust among voters, at 72%.
Moepya said the Commission had undertaken deliberate efforts to rebuild confidence before the elections.
He said it had engaged political parties, traditional leaders, faith-based organisations, university students, school learners, people with disabilities and civil society organisations.
He also acknowledged that public confidence could not simply be demanded.
“That confidence cannot simply be demanded. It must be earned, election after election, in our case through competence, through impartiality, through transparency, through accountability and through integrity,” he said.
Moepya then declared the elections free and fair.