by Inge Hansen (@mecnotabene) With 20 years of democracy behind us, in May 2014, the South African public prepared once again to go to the polls and cast their vote in the national elections. However, things were beginning to change for the parties wooing for votes, in that it’s more difficult now to hold people’s attention than it has ever been and their sources of information are now constantly evolving.
With the exception of a slight increase in the 2004 national election, the SA voter turnout (registered voters who cast their vote) has been on the decline since its high of 87% in 1994. In 2009, of registered voters, 75% arrived on the day and in 2014 we faced a further drop to 73% votes cast from those who registered. This year, out of all eligible voters, less than 60% actually went to the polls on the day to make their mark.
Trend not unique to South Africa
This trend is not unique to South Africa and it is also being seen elsewhere, such as the US, and could be attributed to a sign of a maturing democracy. Challenging this is the Australian government, whereby federal electoral law makes it compulsory for all eligible Australian citizens to enrol and vote, or be liable for a fine.
Within politics, television plays a large role for political campaigns in both reaching a large percentage of the population at the same time and allowing for multiple messaging points. Television is also suited to campaigns where parties point out the faults of the opposition or highlight particular grievances. The news networks play off this drama and the often scheming nature of the parties towards their opponents, because this elevates ratings and holds viewer attention in this largely spectator sport.
This was first seen in politics at the advent of television, when John F Kennedy shot to fame and, ultimately, the Presidency after a series of adverts and televised debates with Richard Nixon, and later in the news frenzy following his assassination.
Turn to advertising
Therefore, outside of specialist programming, political parties need to promote themselves and their policies to the masses, which is when they turn to advertising.
In both the 2009 and 2014 elections, the highest-reported television ratecard value is allocated to the IEC, which between January and May 2014 had R24 million allocated to promoting the fair election process. Behind it, looking at ratecard value from March to May 2014 across all stations, we have the Democratic Alliance with R16 million (up nearly 400% from 2009) and the ANC, with slightly less allocated at R15 million (up 190% from 2009). Gaining an eventual 25 seats in Parliament was the EFF, which by comparison was allocated the small sum of R44 000 on television in May.
On voting day, with just over half the eligible population going to vote, we did not see any major shift in television viewership. It appears that consumers were not all glued to the television, which may speak to whether the election specials that were broadcast were sufficiently engaging, or not.
Stable picture
Looking at the ratings, as compared against the previous week, including the public holiday on 1 May, except for a slight uplift in ARs for adults aged between 45 and 54 years, we see a stable picture. As an average, whether we look at ARs by household income, LSM or age, we see more uplift in viewing the following day, when the results would have been rolling in via various channels.
Select programming may have benefited slightly as a knock-on effect, with one of the standouts being Late Night with Loyiso (e.tv), which had a 15% uplift in viewership (000s) for 2014, for the 15 May show, which followed on from the election results. eNCA also saw a substantial benefit in the week of 5-11 May 2014, where its news programming had an uplift of over 50% in viewership (000s).
In the absence of drastic viewership changes, we need to also look at the technology available to the average consumer to keep up to date with the elections. From standard party websites, Twitter, BBC World on Mxit, the IEC elections portal (elections.org) and the Elections24 app (which had 39 000 downloads), you could get all of the information you needed.
Increasing in importance
As an indication of interest, the elections.org website received so much traffic that it constantly experienced technological issues. But, not everyone has access to the internet as yet; and in time we will see technology and the need for ease of information increasing in importance and competing more with television for the viewers’ attention.
What with voter apathy in South Africa on the increase, these factors make it increasingly difficult for political parties to influence your vote and make an impact.
It will be interesting to see if the communications mix changes as a result for the municipal elections, set to take place in 2016.
Sources:
- Arianna Post Campaign and Programmes (Filter: Total Individuals plus guests)
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqUSKm5MO4Y
- www.elections.org.za/content/
- people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/tv-and-culture/advent-of-television-impact-politics.htm
Following two years at Media24 scrubbing for insights within the magazine division, Inge Hansen joined Nota Bene as an A&I analyst in March 2013. Working across multiple clients, including FMCG, alcohol and petroleum, she has the luxury of working with teams to develop robust insights that drive strategy while keeping abreast of media trends the world over. Inge loves having her pulse on the media landscape but far prefers raising her pulse mountain-biking on weekends. She contributes Thinking TV, a monthly analysis of South African TV viewership figures, to MarkLives. Follow @mecnotabene for regular media updates.
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