ANC holds Buffalo City as UDM surges and EFF halves, election projections show

The ANC is projected to win the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality, taking between 40% and 44% of the vote, according to MarkData election projections reported by eNCA on 5 November 2026.

The same projection puts the UDM second on 15% to 19%, with the DA on 14% to 18%. Election analyst Wayne Sussman called it an astonishing result.

Buffalo City is the Eastern Cape metro built around East London, Mdantsane and Bisho. It is one of the country’s eight metropolitan municipalities, which means the winning party controls a budget and a set of services that residents deal with every day: water, electricity, refuse collection, roads, clinics and the local business licensing that shapes informal trading. The metro vote is not a national opinion poll. It is a contest over who runs those services for the next term.

The shape of the projection is what makes it notable. The ANC would win, but with a share well below the national majority it held a decade ago. The UDM, a party with deep roots in the Eastern Cape and in the former Transkei and Ciskei areas, is projected to grow. The DA is projected to hold a competitive third place. And the EFF, which drew significant support in the municipality in 2024, may have seen its support halve.

The projection also points to a shift inside the metro’s own wards. According to the data, both the ANC and the EFF have lost support in Mdantsane and Bisho, while support for the UDM and the South African Communist Party has risen in the same areas. Mdantsane is one of the largest townships in the country and a historic ANC heartland. Bisho is the provincial capital. Losing ground in both, even while leading the metro, is the kind of detail that matters to anyone reading the result as a signal about the party’s standing in the province.

The projection’s national backdrop is a lower ANC. According to the data, the ANC’s national support fell from 58% to 40% in 2024, a shift attributed largely to the rise of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party. The SACP is also described as putting pressure on the ANC. That national picture is the frame in which a 40% to 44% Buffalo City win reads as a hold rather than a triumph.

Projections are not results. MarkData’s figures are estimates, published before the vote is counted, and the ranges given, four percentage points wide for the ANC and the DA and five for the UDM, are wide enough that the final order below first place could move. The eNCA report does not set out the sample size, the fieldwork dates or the margin of error behind the projection, and those details are what would let a reader judge how firm the numbers are. What the projection does establish is the direction of the contest as MarkData measured it: the ANC ahead, the UDM rising, the DA competitive, the EFF down.

For voters in Buffalo City, the practical question is unchanged. Whoever wins the metro inherits the same service backlogs, the same water and electricity pressures and the same expectations from residents in Mdantsane, Bisho and East London. The projection says the ANC is likely to be the party answering for that record. The size of its margin, and whether the UDM’s growth turns into seats in the council, is what the count will settle.

As eNCA reported on 5 November 2026, the projection comes from MarkData and was published with the caveat that these are projections, not the count.