Buffalo City: UDM second on PR ballot as ANC leads partial count

IEC source: 5 November 2026 at 20:11 SAST. 306 of 380 voting districts and 22 of 50 wards marked complete. Valid ward votes recorded: 202,701; valid municipal PR votes recorded: 202,060. Partial count; no completed council allocation or TPR projection.

Open the refreshed Buffalo City results, wards and stations →

Buffalo City’s recorded municipal PR vote places the UDM ahead of the DA, while the ward ballot puts the DA ahead of the UDM. The ANC leads both. The split shows why a single combined party percentage obscures part of this metro’s election.

What the two ballots show

Five largest recorded municipal PR totals shown; the connected results view contains all contestant rows. Ward and PR totals are separate ballots. District tables combine ward and municipal PR ballots and are labelled accordingly.

The ANC has 80,107 municipal PR votes in the reviewed IEC record. The UDM has 41,002 and the DA 37,895. On ward votes, the ANC has 82,331, the DA 38,735 and the UDM 33,003. These are separate contests and their totals should remain separate.

The ordering matters for readers following more than the largest party. A vote for a local ward candidate and a vote for a party list need not be identical choices. These aggregate returns cannot establish how any individual voter split their ballots or why they made a choice.

What is still unresolved

The source marks 306 of 380 voting districts complete. That leaves 74 districts outside its completed count, with 22 of 50 wards completed. It does not provide a final 100-seat allocation. The ANC’s 15 completed ward seats, DA’s five and UDM’s two account for those 22 ward seats, rather than the entire council.

An outright majority in a 100-seat council requires at least 51 seats. Neither the current PR ranking nor the tally of completed wards establishes the eventual allocation. The remaining returns, the completed allocation and any material corrections still matter.

The useful question now is how the outstanding returns change representation, not who is being offered a mayoral title in negotiations. A coalition announcement would need its own evidence. The council’s lawful election of leadership is a later public decision that residents should be able to inspect.

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The linked results service aims to collect official records every 15 minutes. Unchanged or held source records can retain an older source time. Collection time and publication time are different; a failed or held update does not turn unavailable data into zero.

Buffalo City IEC source, 5 November 20:11 SAST · IEC counting and audit process, 5 November 2026