The Decline and Aftermath of BDP Partisanship in Botswana

Abstract

The collapse in the popular vote for the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in the 2024 elections resulted from short-, medium- and long-term factors. Over the long term, 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 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 BDP partisanship 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 of the decline in identification with the BDP 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 non-partisan or independent voters, i.e. voters who do not feel close to 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 of 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, i.e. with medium-term factors. With reasonable assumptions about short-term effects on turnout and voting preferences, we can simulate the actual 2024 election results.