The Numbers Don't Lie TimesLIVE Podcasts

The youth of South Africa, aged 15-34, didn't exactly queue around the block to vote in the 2019 national elections. The Parliamentary Monitoring Group said the 18-19 year olds on the 2019 voters roll was some 47% of what it was in 2014.

But despite the low turnout and low number of new registrations, we still have some hope that the young people of this country have a contribution to make. We just doubt it's going to happen in the current system.

We get Pearl Pillay, managing director of Youth Lab, a youth policy think tank, to set host Scott Peter Smith and resident data analyst Paul Berkowitz straight.

On the show where we don't make predictions, our resident analyst Paul Berkowitz talks to Professor Ivor Sarakinsky, an associate professor at the Wits School of Governance, where against all odds, came pretty close to electoral prediction perfection.

The trick? Sarakinsky merely says, "We suck our thumbs harder than the pollsters do," and ignore the polls outright.

Have a listen. A little technical, but informative.

In this episode our resident data analyst Paul Berkowitz takes over as host and brings guest Dr Sithembile Mbete from the department of political sciences at the University of Pretoria.

They discuss the split between the national and provincial vote, especially as it affects the major opposition parties.

Right wing party Freedom Front Plus is, at the time of publishing, now the country's fourth largest party.

IEC is in a spin due to the growing confirmations of what is called double voting - the same individual voting more than once - due to either bad technology and bad thumb ink - either which way we talk about what it means for the numbers on the bog board as counting is finalised.

Listen to resident data analyst Paul Berkowitz has to say along with political journalist Qaanitah Hunter in this episode with a slightly different format.

While we can expect EFF chief Julius Malema won't be taking the president position, his party is still growing nicely - are we looking at a kingmaker scenario? A bigger percentage of the vote also means that the EFF has greater bargaining power, especially in the event of coalition negotiations at national and provincial level.

In this episode we are taking a closer look at everyone's favourite politician and are joined by resident data analyst Paul Berkowitz, director of Edgis and Sunday Times journalist Zingisa Mvumvu who has been on top of the moving and shaking going on in the party.

In this episode we are taking a closer look at gender and the so-called gender divide in the South African electorate. As registered voters, women outnumber men by over two million and have a much higher voter turnout, but this doesn't translate into direct campaigning by parties to appeal to their vote.

Also, while parliament often congratulates itself on its representation of women and our constitutionally enshrined right to equality, this hasn’t always translated into improved conditions for women.

Furthermore, poll findings suggest women are less likely to be partisan. In other words, they are less likely to have a strong, enduring party loyalty, suggesting that a party that can solve immediate problems and speak directly to women, could clinch support.

We have data analyst Paul Berkowitz, director of Edgis and associate editor for analysis in the Tiso Blackstar Group Ranjeni Munusamy to ask whether parties are missing a trick.