JOHANNESBURG - One of South Africa's top pollsters has suggested that the ANC breakaway party headed up by Terror Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa could draw as much as 20% of the vote in the 2009 election. Professor Lawrence Schlemmer based this estimate on an opinion survey conducted by MarkData earlier this year.

In an interview with Alec Hogg on the Moneyweb Power Hour on SAFM (see transcript) Schlemmer said that "there is absolutely no doubt that the ANC, as it is at the moment under Mr Jacob Zuma, will lose support to this breakaway group. This breakaway group may also attract support from other opposition parties, so it's not only the ANC that's going to pay a price."

Schlemmer further stated, "if I interpret the results, look at the loyalties, look at the ratings of various leaders, their popularity, policy inclinations and all that sort of thing, I would say that the ANC could in fact lose anything up to about 20% [of the entire vote]. ... Now that of course would bring the ANC down to round about 50%, and then we'd be in a very interesting situation, because we'd probably have to have a coalition government in some shape or form."

However, Schlemmer did raise questions as to whether the breakaway would be able to sustain itself past 2009 up until the 2014 election. He said that "one of the factors that attracts people to the ANC is that it is the largest party. Now, people are fanciful in their thinking about prospects, and there are a lot of people that think that this breakaway group could in fact challenge the existing ANC in size...People love to be able to back a winner, their egos are involved, as individuals they feel more expansive if they are on the winning side. Now, when it turns out that this party, this breakaway group, is not - even though it may get a considerable amount of support it's not the same size as the ANC - some of the enthusiasm is going to go away. This has happened in the past, it happened to Mr Holomisa. You remember a lot of people backed him because they thought, wow, he's a popular guy, he's a winner. And when it turned out that he wasn't going to get all that much support they lost interest."

The Markdata poll which Schlemmer was discussing was a face to face survey of 2415 adult South Africans conducted between April and June 2008 (see here) - so after Polokwane but before the ANC breakaway. The poll is significant because it is the first representative survey published since the ANC's national conference in December. Other published polls this year have been confined to voters in the metropolitan areas and/or individuals with landline telephones.

The poll showed that with the 15,5% of non-choices excluded the ANC enjoyed the support of 70,5% of those polled, while the DA had the support of 20,6% of respondents. The ANC's support was down from the previous highs of March 2007 but at around the same level that it received in the 2004 election. DA support meanwhile was substantially up from the 12,4% support it received in the last national elections.

The survey also found that some 40% of ANC supporters polled expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of government and a similar percentage felt the country was moving in the wrong direction. 47% said they would support a party free of corruption. Schlemmer states in his report on the survey that one of the reasons why the ANC has maintained its high levels of popular support - despite such dissatisfaction and the internal dissension within the movement - was because "the leaders of different support groups in the party are all inside the party, hence not only villains but the heroes as well are ensconced in key party structures."

Among ANC supporters polled 22,2% said they admired former ANC President Thabo Mbeki, with a further 30,6% saying they strongly admired him. Although ANC President Jacob Zuma was admired, or strongly admired, by 60,3% of his party's supporters he was disliked or strongly disliked by 22,1% of them. One of the most influential power brokers in the new ANC, the SACP leader Blade Nzimande, was disliked or strongly disliked by 54,1% of ANC supporters.

Schlemmer notes in his report that Zuma "is a source of hope for the poorest, most aspirant and numerous among the party supporters." If his candidacy for the South African presidency were to be blocked by legal action "the party will be thrown into disarray because there is no alternative candidate with a sufficiently prominent profile to unite the party at short notice."

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