The vote share of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC) after this week's parliamentary election slipped further to just over 40% with results in from almost all polling stations, the electoral commission's website showed on Saturday.
The ANC is now all but certain to have to seek a coalition partner to secure enough backing to name a president and form a government.
With results from 97% of voting centres, the ANC stood at 40.14%, a precipitous drop from the 57.5% it secured in the last national election in 2019.
The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, was at 21.7%, while uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a new party led by former president Jacob Zuma, polled 14.8%.
Coalition talks
Political parties have started setting out their stalls ahead of talks on sharing power.
"We have been talking with everybody even before the election," ANC's deputy secretary general Nomvula Mokonyane told AFP, saying the party's decision-making body would set the course to follow after final results are announced.
"Anything must be based on principles and not an act of desperation."
The final results are expected at the weekend, but with the trends clear, politicians and pundits were turning their attention to the prospects of an ANC-led coalition.
The ANC has dominated South Africa's democracy with an unbroken run of five presidents from the party, but if President Cyril Ramaphosa is to remain at the helm he will have to decide whether to seek allies on his right or left.
ANC-DA coalition?
There will be resistance within his movement to a tie-up with the second-placed DA, under white politician John Steenhuisen, whose free market programme of privatisations and an end to black economic empowerment programmes sits at odds with the ruling party's traditions .
The radical left groups led by former ANC figures: firebrand Julius Malema's EFF or Zuma's MK, are considered more likely bedfellows.
The ANC retains the loyalty of many voters for its leading role in overthrowing white minority rule and its progressive social welfare and black economic empowerment policies are credited by supporters with helping millions of black families out of poverty.
But over three decades of almost unchallenged rule, its leadership has been implicated in a series of large-sca le corruption scandals, while the continent's most industrialised economy has languished and crime and unemployment figures have hit record highs.
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