London votes overwhelmingly DA #Elections2019

LONDON — The first votes of one of the most contentious elections in South Africa's history were cast by overseas voters this weekend. With just over a week to go, the expats in the United Kingdom have given some indication of what we can expect in the election on the 8th of May. Most of the voters we spoke to indicated that they will go for the bigger parties on the national list and it appears that it is unlikely that the long list of smaller parties on the ballot paper will be favoured by voters. Smaller parties may however be a factor in the provinces with many parties talking about coalitions. The two provinces where this may be a factor is Gauteng, where polls predict that the ANC may lose its majority and the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance is trying to hold on to its dominant position. The DA, which managed to gain as much as 80% of the vote in Britain in the previous national election in 2014 seems to be the favoured party in the UK and in tweets and interviews we did at the South African Embassy in London, the diaspora in the UK has indicated that it is the DA that most of them supported. - Linda van Tilburg