Talk:2016 South African municipal elections

EFF

Under the section "Importance" should we not mention that this is the first time the EFF would be contesting local govt elections? 163.202.48.126 (talk) 11:26, 31 July 2016 (UTC)

//Khara Hais/Mier Local Municipality (Northern Cape)

This is currently two separate LMs, and two separate articles - //Khara Hais Local Municipality and Mier Local Municipality. Do we simply merge the articles or start a new article for the merged municipality? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 14:37, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

There's a new article under the title Dawid Kruiper Local Municipality which is to be the new name. See Wikipedia:WikiProject South Africa/Municipalities task force#2016 changes for all the new names. - htonl (talk) 19:52, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I've updated the link in the table. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:00, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Should we include financial/market response to election?

Is this sufficiently significant to include in this article?

• http://businesstech.co.za/news/business/132461/rand-hits-r13-75-vs-the-dollar-as-early-election-results-show-a-weaker-anc/
• http://www.fin24.com/Economy/anc-risks-shift-to-populist-policies-warns-fitch-20160805

Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:32, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Another - http://www.fin24.com/Companies/Property/elections-outcome-just-what-sas-property-sector-needed-20160809

Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:06, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Finished populating the Municipalities

Finished populating the Municipalities. Can some added the figures in as real life calls? Thanks. Conlinp (talk) 04:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

District Municipalities are still incorrect - Northwest's District Municipalities are just copied from Northern Cape. Why did it take so long for us to all notice?

Crop the photo?

I think the photo of the posters on a pole needs to be cropped to better show the posters, the background/location isn't really relevant so we don't need to show so much of it. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 18:26, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree. - htonl (talk) 20:11, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

 Done Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:51, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Speculation about coalitions

I think we shouldn't speculate about possible coalitions in the tables, seems a bit WP:CRYSTALBALL to me. - htonl (talk) 22:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

PS: for the sake of transparency, I want to point out the conflict of interest declaration on my user page. My mainspace edits will only be factual/statistical edits to tables and maps; anything else I will post in Talk. I should add that I speak purely for myself as a Wikipedia editor here; nothing I say is on behalf of my employer! - htonl (talk) 22:18, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Agree, we should just wait and see what happens. It should be clear within a few days anyway. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 22:30, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Majority

What is a majority in SA municipal politics - 51% of the seats or 66% of the seats? Or half the seats plus one? Conlinp (talk) 00:32, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Half the seats plus one. - htonl (talk) 03:40, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

"Control" column in tables

Does the "Control" column serve an actual useful purpose? The numbers speak for themselves supported by the colour. We don't have it in articles about previous elections. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 06:57, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm basing the control columns on the UK local elections pages - where one party has a majority I agree its self explanatory however I think it does provide relevant information in the NOC/Hung (No Overall Control) councils where no one party has a majority the kind of coalition deals that are being made. Given that this election has resulted in a number of key councils such as Nelson Mandela Bay going from a single party majority to NOC I think its relevant to show what the council control is, especially given that many councils could become controlled by either the ANC or the DA depending on the actions of the smaller parties. Further to this, the way third parties act and the way coalitions can be formed is currently a big topic in South African politics Guyb123321 (talk) 18:36, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

References

InfoBox

Can we add an InfoBox to this election similar to the South African general election pages and these other worldwide local election pages:United Kingdom local elections, 2016;Italian local elections, 2016; French regional elections, 2015; Spanish municipal elections, 2015; Brazilian municipal elections, 2012 Guyb123321 (talk) 20:08, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Go for it. There are only four really significant parties; ANC, DA, EFF and IFP - so it should be fairly easy. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:32, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Can the infobox be adjusted to display the four parties in a 2 x 2 "square" arrangement instead of the current "three and one" layout which makes the infobox very wide? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:03, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

OP-ED piece in the NYT

There was an OP-ED piece in the New York Times 9/08/2016 titled - A Seismic Shock for Jacob Zuma - concerning the outcome of the latest Municipal elections: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/opinion/a-seismic-shock-for-jacob-zuma.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region

Conlinp (talk) 08:49, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Minority government vs cooperation

In the tables of election results by municipality, I recommend consistency over the use of terms of minority government vs cooperation. I think they mean the same thing (one party government without an outright majority but with outside support) but saying a DA-minority gov't doesn't give the info on who's voting with them (EFF) whereas saying a IFP-EFF-DA cooperation isn't too clear on which party (or parties) is in gov't and which is supporting from outside. — Preceding unsigned comment added by WilliamKingSC4 (talk • contribs) 03:25, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

It's only when the EFF is involved that it gets wierd - the rest of the parties have chosen to form conventional coalitions. Take Tshwane for example - the ruling coalition is the DA plus a few others, with additional non-coalition support from the EFF. To call it a DA minority council is misleading. We could deal with the complication using explanatory footnotes per {{notelist}} as has been done for the newly merged municipalities. -- Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:27, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Is it possible to have a colour rather than grey to represent the different types of either coalition/minority governments. An ANC lead coalition is very different from a DA lead coalition or a DA minority. Maybe a lighter shade of the party colour to represent that it is lead by the party but it is not a majority government? - Abuti Sechaba 16:05, 2 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.160.221.17 (talk)

certain gov'ts could qualify as both coalition (more than one party in govt) and minority (outside support in the council needed) and therefore could be described "minority coalition" or "coalition minority". e.g. Joburg and Tshwane — Preceding unsigned comment added by WilliamKingSC4 (talk • contribs) 16:08, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

District municipalities

We could colorize the columns differently to differentiate between metropolitan, local, and also district councils — Preceding unsigned comment added by WilliamKingSC4 (talk • contribs) 01:39, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

The way district municipalities are constituted is so different from local and metro municipalities that I think they should be in separate table(s). Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

They were elected on the same day so they need to be on this page. And the percentages for the votes for DC are in the same chart above. If they are to be separated down here it needs to be consistant on the whole page. Abuit Sechaba 22:22, 2 September 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.160.221.17 (talk)

They're only partially elected on the same day - the PR list councillors that make up 40% of the district councils were elected on 3 August; but the 60% that are nominated from the local municipalities are only elected later when the local councils meet. They definitely should be on the same page, but I think there's a good argument for separating them in the tables. - htonl (talk) 22:46, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Why have DMs been inserted in only the Gauteng and Western Cape tables, but not the rest of the provinces? The way they are inserted also does not properly convey the fact that each DM is actually made up of a number of LMs. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:04, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

I suspect because no-one has got around to adding them to the other provinces? DMs are difficult because, as you say, they are elected quite differently, and also because it's not that easy to find out the actual councillor breakdown by party. - htonl (talk) 18:47, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

True, DM councils hardly ever make the news, which probably explains why we've never attempted to list them in previous election articles. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:02, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Totals column

Knyzna1, what was the reason for removing the totals column. In your edit summary, you said to "match the 2011 table", which makes no sense. Shall we remove everything to match the 1995 table? :) It will be tedious to restore, and the table is now incomplete and unsorted. Greenman (talk) 19:06, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Luckily it wasn't too hard to restore as there weren't any other significant change in that section. Zaian (talk) 20:13, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Greenman and Zaian. In hindsight it was perhaps not a very good idea to remove the column in question. I apologise for that. At that time, it seemed that after I had formatted the table the data looked rather overwhelming and, in my opinion (that's all it is, however), the "Totals" column was rather misleading, as it did not take metro results into account. The 2011 table seemed quite professionally done, so I based my edit off of that. For what it's worth, I also hoped my edit would improve the aesthetic value of the article a bit, in an attempt to make it more of a pleasure to read. I thought I would "be bold" and allow my decision to be challenged by anyone who found it inappropriate. Oh well, live and learn :) I do hope we could maybe edit the layout of the results section a bit; it looks rather clumsy at the moment. Best wishes. Knyzna1 (talk) 19:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

No need to apologise, I think you make a valid point. Now I'm wondering what the point is of either the "Ward + PR" columns or the "Total" columns. Zaian (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

The "Ward + PR" column is a better reflection of overall national levels of support because it counts two votes for each voter - whereas the "Total" column counts three votes per voter in the rural areas but only two votes per voter in the metros. - htonl (talk) 10:56, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I misunderstood the system, and thought rural votes would be under-counted without including the DC votes. So to clarify, everyone in the country gets a ward vote and a PR vote (two votes), but those in rural areas also get a third DC vote. Arguably then PR alone would be the best indicator, but extrapolating local results nationally will always be flawed in some way. All columns should stay for completeness, but the article needs a full explanation of the voting system and what each of the columns means. Some text next to the map, and before the table, explaining the system and summarising results/trends would help with the layout of the article. We should settle on a convention for sorting. I updated many of the individual party articles with the "total", which will need to be corrected, as I think in the past Ward+PR have been used, but it's probably best in those articles that the full details are shown too. The elections.org.za website only shows national results for the 2011 and 2016 elections, not earlier, and many of the sources on those Wikipedia articles don't work anymore. Does anyone have sources for national results for the earlier elections? Greenman (talk) 11:40, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

I used the Ward + PR data in the results summary I wrote for the lead, for now, and added a footnote explaining why it was used. I noticed that most local and international publications ([1][2]) make use of this figure. Please don't hesitate to change this if we reach an alternative consensus. Knyzna1 (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Bitou update

@Htonl: I tried to do it but couldn't figure out how to change the colour of the cell: Bitou has changed from an ANC-AUF coalition to a DA-AUF one. Source: AWildAppeared (talk) 08:30, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

References

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• 2016 South African municipal election posters in Cape Town.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)