How to follow the local election count

Results for the 2026 local elections come in batches from the night of Wednesday 4 November, after voting stations close. The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) counts the votes and declares every result. The MzansiData tracker reads the IEC's files and shows each of the 213 metro and local councils next to its result in 2021, the previous local elections. Some councils have more or fewer seats than in 2021, so compare seat counts with care.

Results arrive one voting district at a time

The IEC's pre-election data for 2026 (published 22 October 2026) lists 23 696 voting districts, each served by a voting station. Votes are counted at the station, and each result is checked and captured before the IEC publishes it. From 4 to 8 November the tracker checks the IEC's files about every 15 minutes and shows the time of the IEC's latest results.

Early national shares can move as more districts report

Districts don't report in a random order. How soon one finishes depends on things such as how far its result has to travel. The first results are therefore not a fair sample of the country, and national shares can rise or fall as the rest arrive. While a council is still counting, the tracker marks it as counting and says a party leads there; its result is official once the IEC declares it.

Seats come from the ward and party ballots together

Every voter gets a ward ballot, for a councillor for their ward, and a proportional representation (PR) ballot, for a party. Outside the metros, voters also get a second PR ballot, which elects the district council and doesn't count towards local council seats; the tracker doesn't cover the district councils. About half of a council's seats go to the ward winners. The PR seats are then added so that each party's total is in line with its share of the ward and PR votes combined, which is why seat shares are close to vote shares but seldom the same.

A majority means more than half the seats

Johannesburg, the largest council, has 270 seats in 2026, for example, so a party needs 136 of them for a majority.

When no party has more than half the seats, the council is hung. The council, or in some municipalities its executive committee, elects the mayor at a meeting after the results are declared, and in a hung council the largest party usually needs votes from other parties to win that vote.

The diagram shows two made-up councils of 21 seats each, where a majority needs 11.

The IEC's figures are the official ones

The IEC declares each council's result once its count is complete and any objections have been decided, and it announces the national totals. The tracker can be up to one update behind the IEC's results site, results.elections.org.za; if the two differ, the IEC's figure is the one that counts.

Each council's result is in the lookup

Type your municipality's name into the council lookup to see its result next to 2021. The eight metros each have a page: Buffalo City, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane.