Declining voter turnout poses existential threat to democracy – IRR – POLITICS

Organisation says if South Africans don’t see voting as a valid, then democracy itself, as well as elections, risk no longer being seen as legitimate

Declining voter turnout poses existential threat to democracy – IRR

31 July 2025

The declining proportion of eligible voters who take part in elections raises the risk of democracy in South Africa facing an existential crisis.

So says the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), which last week released a report on changing the country’s electoral system, Electoral reform – time to do it properly. The report says reforms could go some way towards arresting the decline in the number of people who bother to vote.

Says Marius Roodt, IRR analyst and author of the report: “The proportion of people who turn up to vote when we have elections has been declining for some time. While the headline figures generally don’t look so bad they leave out South Africans who are eligible to vote but have not registered as voters.”

He points to statistics from the last two polls to illustrate the point.