Racial, Ethnic or Rational Voters? Splitting Tickets in South Africa

Abstract

Many scholars worried that political liberalization in South Africa would open the door to widespread racial and ethnic conflict or that elections would be little more than a ‘racial/ethnic census’. Today, after South Africa's third successful election, ideas about the extent to which South African voters cast their votes on the basis of ascribed racial or ethnic identities remain controversial. This paper offers a new way to assess competing hypotheses about the micro-foundations of South African vote choice: by studying the correlates of a strategic voting behavior, split-ticket voting. This is accomplished by analyzing data from a 1997 survey in which respondents participated in a ‘mock election’. The results show that ascribed identities do certainly play a role in predicting strategic voting in South Africa but that they are far from being the only important predictors. This research shows that strategic voting in South Africa is driven at least as much by political sophistication and political ideology as by loyalty to any racial, ethnic, or regional identity.