The Centre for Social Sciences Research (CSSR) and the  Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa  (IDCPPA) at the University of Cape Town invite you to join us for a lunchtime seminar on 14 October 2025 at 12:45pm. The seminar will be presented by Prof Jeremy Seekings.

About the Seminar:

The decline and aftermath of voter identification with the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in Botswana

The collapse in the popular vote for the BDP in the 2024 election followed a period over which there had been a dramatic decline in the proportion of the electorate who identified with the party. As recently as the early 2000s, Afrobarometer found that about one half of surveyed Batswana said that they felt close to the BDP. This share had dropped to about one-fifth by the 2020s. A small part of this was due to generational replacement, as the earlier (and more loyal) generation counted for a smaller and smaller share of the electorate. Most of the decline in identification with the BDP was due to diminishing support within older generations. Some aspects of social and economic change - including urbanisation and the declining significance of agriculture - may have contributed to this. Most was due, however, to worsening assessments of the performance of the party and its leaders. The decline of BDP partisanship means that election outcomes have come to be determined by the votes of nonpartisan voters, i.e. voters who do not feel close to either the BDP or any of the (then) opposition parties.

In the 2020s, few of these non-partisans are swayed by regional, ethnic or other 'sociological' factors. Voting intentions among the rising number non-partisans correlate with these voters' assessments of the performance of the president and government and how much they trust the BDP and opposition parties. With reasonable assumptions about turnout and voting preferences, we can simulate the actual 2024 election results

Speakers

Jeremy Seekings is Professor of Political Studies and Sociology at UCT, formerly director of the CSSR and currently Acting Director of the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa. He is a founding member of both the Zambia and Botswana Election Research Networks.

  14 October 2025
  12:45 - 14:00 SAST
   CSSR Seminar Room, 4.29 Robert Leslie Social Science Building, UCT

Hosted by the Centre for Social Science Research and the Institute for Democracy, Citizenship and Public Policy in Africa


 
The website encountered an unexpected error. Try again later.