CLAIM: For a candidate to win the presidential race, he/she should get 50 percent of the votes plus 1 (51 percent) of the total votes.
SOURCE: Spiked Media
VERDICT: Misleading
With Zimbabwe’s 2023 elections scheduled for the 23rd of August 2023, a lot of information is going around and citizens are familiarising themselves with the electoral law and voting procedures.
A reader asked us to fact-check an election related claim from 5 years ago. The claim from Spiked Media is that ‘for a candidate to win the presidential race, he/she should get 50 percent of the votes plus 1 (51 percent) of the total votes.
Zimbabwe uses the first past the post system or a simple majority to determine it’s election winners.
Credit: AP
The Ace Electoral Knowledge Network, an organisation launched at the United Nations in 1998 by International IDEA, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), describes first past the post as a system where ‘the voter is presented with the names of the nominated candidates and votes by choosing one, and only one, of them. The winning candidate is simply the person who wins the most votes; in theory he or she could be elected with two votes, if every other candidate only secured a single vote’.
Section 110(3)(f) of the Electoral Act speaks on the determination of a winner in the presidential race:
- (i) where there are two candidates, forthwith declare the candidate who has received the greater number of votes to be duly elected as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe with effect from the day of such declaration; or
- (ii)where there are more than two candidates, forthwith declare the candidate who has received more than half the number of votes to be duly elected as President of the Republic of Zimbabwe with effect from the day of such declaration; or
- (iii)where there are more than two candidates, and no candidate has received more than half the number of votes, forthwith declare that a runoff presidential election shall be held on the date fixed by the President in terms of section 38(1)(a)(iii) (that is to say, a fixed date not less than twenty-eight and not more than forty-two days after the polling day or last polling day, the case may be, of the original election)
This means that a presidential candidate only needs a simple majority or where there are more than two candidates, more than half the votes – 50 percent of the votes plus 1, as the claim states. However, this 50 percent plus 1 does not equate to 51%.
While these may sound like the same thing, the difference is huge. Let’s say for instance, there are 3000 voters in a presidential election. For a candidate to win, they will need half of those votes – 1 500, plus 1 to make it 1 501. On the other hand, 51% would mean that they need 1 530 votes – which is 29 more. In a presidential election with millions of voters, the margins would be way wider.
Conclusion
A presidential candidate, where there are more than two candidates, needs more than half the number of votes cast to win. This means 50 percent plus one. The claim has been rated as misleading because the 50 percent plus 1 does not equate to 51 percent.
