Do voters consider election manifestos before deciding which political party to vote for?

Political parties are in a race to sell their election promises and policy positions to voters. With the 2024 general election date soon to be announced , several political parties will be launching their election manifestos. The EFF launched it's election manifesto in Durban yesterday (Saturday) and the other 3 of South Africa's top 4 political parties will also launch their manifestos in the coming weeks. An election manifesto is essentially a list of policies that a political party promises to implement if it is voted into office. Much will be made of the popularity of parties' manifesto pledges, but ultimately they are much less important to how people vote than other factors like leadership and core values. Research has shown that many voters, either consciously or subconsciously, will refuse to even give a party a fair hearing on their promises or take their leader seriously if they believe the party does not meet their standards when it comes to core values like strength, decisiveness and how in touch they are with them as voters. Some experts have concluded that policies alone do not win elections as a negative perception of a party or it's leader can reverse their electoral fortunes.  We ask, how seriously do South Africans consider election manifestos before deciding on which political party to vote for?   To unpack this Bongiwe Zwane spoke to   Dr Sithembile Mbete, political analyst  and lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Pretoria and Professor Shepherd Mpofu , Associate Professor for Media Studies at UNISA