Core support for COPE (Congress of the People) has slumped since the national election in April 2009 and currently stands at 2,2%. However, potential still exists and a further one in every ten eligible voters (8%) say that they would "perhaps vote" for this party.

COPE was formed a year ago, on 16 December 2008. At that stage it was reported in an Ipsos Markinor press release (dated15 December 2008) that nearly two in every ten likely voters (16%) "Strongly agreed" or "agreed" that there was no political party representing their views. Three in every ten (28%) of likely voters said it would enhance democracy if a part of the ANC broke away and form a new political party that could be an efficient opposition to the ruling ANC.

The press release further stated that: "Looking at these findings there is definitely space for a new political party as a sizable proportion of likely voters are not happy with the current political parties.

COPE can stake its claim here, provided their policies appeal to voters and they can sell the idea that another political party will lead to more checks and balances in the political landscape and promote good governance in the country."

However, the emergence of COPE has not been without controversy and several leadership struggles crippled the party, both before and after the general election in April 2009.

This had a very negative effect on COPE‟s chances in the national election. In March 2009 possible support for the party was measured at 8,9% by Ipsos Markinor.

Both the ANC and DA election campaigns were brilliantly run in the period just before the election and COPE drew 7,42% of the actual votes in the national election on 22 April 2009.

Current support for COPE

Current support for COPE stands at 2,2% of eligible voters (South Africans older than 18), who indicated on a "secret ballot paper" in an Ipsos Markinor poll conducted from 21 October to 13 November 2009 that they would vote for COPE.ii This is a drop of more than 5 percentage points since April 2009.

Looking at the profile of the 2,2% who voted for COPE on the "secret ballot" it is clear that: the support for the party is largely concentrated in Gauteng representatives of all population groups form part of COPE‟s constituency (supporter base) the party‟s current support consists of more male than female supporters the party draws support from all age groups, but a third of their support comes from younger people, aged 18-24.

Profile of current COPE supporters:

Potential support

To get a better understanding of the spectrum of opinions about the eight biggest political parties in the country Ipsos Markinor asked respondents to express an opinion about each of these parties by making use of a "holistic scale". Each voter had to indicate how he/she feels about each party on a 6-point scale ranging from "I reject this organisation completely and on principle" to "I would definitely vote for this organisation, if there were an election."

The results regarding COPE were as follows:

According to this, 8% of eligible voters said that they would "perhaps vote" for COPE. This potential support for the party mainly comes from Gauteng (21%), the Eastern Cape (20%) and the Western Cape (19%).

Comparing these results to the profile of current COPE supporters discussed earlier, the party has the potential to increase support in Gauteng and the Eastern Cape and explore new possibilities in the Western Cape.

However, as 38% of potential support for COPE comes from metropolitan areas and a further 35% from villages and rural areas, the party has to address a variety of issues important to people who live in big cities, whilst not forgetting the interests of people in the more remote areas of the country.

Potentially more females (55%) than males (45%) might support COPE and, in terms of age, the biggest potential for supporters lies among those older than 35 (especially people between 35-49 years old).

Leadership

Leadership and the image of leaders are very important elements in the political scene of our country and we saw that the leadership struggles and the resulting uncertainty had a devastating effect on COPE‟s election hopes.

Respondents were asked to indicate how many points out of 10 they would allocate to a political leader, where 0 means that the person was "totally against" the leader and 10 meant that the person was "totally in favour" of the leader. Mosiuoa Lekota, the leader of COPE, scored 5.85 out of 10 as judged by supporters of his own party. ANC supporters gave him a score of 3.73, DA supporters 3.87 and IFP supporters 2.94.

All sample surveys are subject to a certain margin of error, as opinion polling is not an exact science.

Results have to be evaluated within the margin of error. For the study as a whole this margin of error is between 0.72% and 1.66%.

This survey is published courtesy of Ipsos Markinor

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