Cape Town - Democratic Alliance Western Cape premier candidate Alan Winde is confident the party will retain control of the province.
Speaking to the African News Agency at the IEC results centre in Cape Town on Thursday, a day after national elections, Winde said it was "so far, so good" for the DA despite the polls predicting the opposite at the end of last year.
Winde said it had been a tough and gruelling campaign after months of bitter political infighting which saw former Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille being booted out of the party under a cloud of corruption allegations.
"It was a whole range of issues from the drought to infighting, people perceiving whether delivery takes place or not," he said.
"We might brag that we have the lowest unemployment rate in South Africa but at the end of the day there are so many millions of people in the country and in this province thousands who don't have a job, and a lot of people moving here for opportunities which puts huge pressure on the system. It's a complex environment in which to operate, but it looks like we've managed to retain it."
He said De Lille's departure from the party had not significantly impacted the votes.
On Wednesday, there were a number of complaints about voting stations running out of ballot papers in the Mother City, but Winde said the DA was addressing the hiccups.
"A lot of ballot paper issues across the board, in various areas, also barcode readers we had an issue with them, the training and capabilitities of a number of IEC officials I was worried about it, those are all the things we have lodged," he said.
The Democratic Alliance's Western Cape premier candidate Alan Winde is confident of a victory in the province. Video:Catherine Rice/African News Agency (ANA)
"The big question is, was it material, will it have an impact on the outcome and that's what they are looking at and that is what the analysis will establish."
With a quarter of votes tallied, the DA was significantly ahead with 53.81 percent of the votes in the Western Cape, while the African National Congress was sitting at 29.48 percent.