MISTRA Coalitions Barometer
The definitive record of coalition government in South Africa
A comprehensive dataset on the politics of South Africa’s hung councils and legislatures, released alongside an in-depth report and an interactive map. The 2026 edition is now available.
Three ways to understand the data
Read MISTRA’s 2026 report
MISTRA Coalitions Barometer 2026: Analysis of the Dataset. The story of South African coalition politics since 2021, as told by the data.
Download the report (PDF, 2.1 MB)Explore the interactive map
Find a municipality, see which coalition governed it, and how South Africa’s political geography has shifted over time.
Open the map (opens in a new tab)Public betaAnalyse the raw data yourself
Do you have your own theory about coalition politics? Download the dataset and analyse it in any statistics package.
Get the data and codebookData and methods
A record of every administration. Every coalition and minority administration from start to end, built from council records and news reports at the time.
Every party’s role. Each party with seats coded as a member, a supporter or part of the opposition of each administration, to strict standards of evidence.
How each coalition was built. Its size and political structure, defined by consistent rules and coded by researchers experienced in South African politics.
Methods that can be checked. The public codebook lays out the coding rules. The data and the scripts that produce the report’s figures are free to download, so any figure can be reproduced or recoded. Corrections are listed in the release notes.
Citation and contact
Cite the dataset
Cite the report
The codebook, the analysis scripts and most columns of the dataset are released under CC BY 4.0. Columns first published by other bodies are excepted; see Sources and citations. The analysis report is © 2026 Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, all rights reserved, and is not covered by the open licence.
Media & contact
- Media enquiries: info@mistra.org.za
- Key findings (PDF, 898 KB)
- Permanent link: coalitions.mistra.org.za
- Data questions & corrections: coalitions@mistra.org.za
By the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
MISTRA is an independent research institute based in Johannesburg, taking a long-term view on the strategic challenges facing South Africa, the African continent, and the globe. The Coalitions Barometer is part of its research programme on coalition governance.
Project funder: the Millennium Trust.