5 interesting stats from voter registration
The first registration weekend for this year’s local government elections saw more than 3 million South Africans visiting voting stations.
|||Cape Town - The first registration weekend for this year’s local government elections saw more than 3 million South Africans visiting voting stations to either register as first-time voters, change their particulars or check whether their names appeared on the voters roll.
On Tuesday, the Independent Electoral Commission said the figure was more than double that recorded during the first registration weekend for the previous local government elections in 2011, and a 23 percent increase over registration activity ahead of the 2014 general elections.
Of the 3 097 194 voters who visited voting stations at the weekend:
* 692 730 were new registrations.
* 1 086 958 were re-registrations in different voting districts.
* And 1 317 506 visited to confirm and update their registration in the same voting district.
* The IEC’s Lydia Young said of the new registrations 78.6 percent were under 30, which meant there had been a significant response by the youth.
* Almost 54 percent of the new registrations were women.
This trend applies to all provinces except the Northern Cape, where new registrations were split equally between men and women.
KwaZulu-Natal (166 112 or 24 percent) and Gauteng (156 331 or 22.5 percent) together accounted for almost half of all new registrations.
Cape Times