The Democratic Alliance (DA) and the New National Party (NNP) were both confident yesterday that they would be able to claim undecided voters in the upcoming elections.

Reacting to the results of a survey done by the SABC and Markinor, the DA said the outcome of the elections could not be accurately predicted by the survey for a number of reasons.

"While we are gratified that the Markinor Opinion Survey released today shows that the Democratic Alliance remains the second biggest party in South Africa by a considerable margin, the poll is not and cannot be an accurate predictor of the final election outcome later this year," DA spokesperson Ryan Coetzee said in a statement.

He said the first reason why the survey could not be accepted as a definite predictor was that it had been conducted in October and November last year, before the DA had embarked on its election campaign.

Also, the respondents were not all registered voters.

"...the DA's proportion of the vote rises significantly when only registered voters are taken into account".

He said the survey had indicated that a large number of voters remained undecided and in the last two elections the DA had been very successful at shifting there voters.

Coetzee warned against taking the predictions of surveys as a given.

"While opinion surveys and election outcome predictions are always produced when elections are in the offing, journalists and analysts should be very careful about making any assumptions based on them.

"The election outcome will be determined by the quality of the various campaigns and by turnout on the day".

The NNP said a recent survey by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) indicated "substantially" more support for the party.

Party spokesperson Carol Johnson said in a statement that the Markinor poll should be read in that context.

"It is clear that the NNP's core support has been consolidated and according to feedback from grassroot campaigning the support is growing".

She said the survey showed a large number of uncertain voters.

The NNP was confident that it could pick up a large number of those voters in the run-up to the election.

"We believe that the poll shows that the NNP will, nationally, take over from the IFP as the third biggest party in Parliament.

"What it also shows is that the DA has reached a growth ceiling; their support of 21% in the 2000 local government elections has been halved". – Sapa.