Something funny happened in the British elections just over two weeks ago. Every pollster across the length and breadth of the UK predicted that the two main political parties - the Conservatives and Labour - would pull about 33% to 34% of the vote each, leading to a long, exhausting battle by either side to form a coalition government that would not soon collapse.The pollsters were wrong. David Cameron's Conservative Party streaked ahead and won 37% of the vote but, crucially, managed to win the key seats it needs to form a majority in the House of Commons. The Tories won 331 seats to Labour's 232.What happened? Many ascribe the Conservative victory to the idea of "shy Tories" - the vast, silent majority of people who are too shy and too intimidated to say out loud to pollsters that they would vote for the unsexy Conservatives.It is a phenomenon that goes back to the 1992 UK elections when pollsters said that the Labour Party would trounce the John Major-led Conservatives.They were wrong then as the unsexy Major continued the Tories' winning streak following Margaret Thatcher's advances in the 1980s.In this UK election, polling firm YouGov head Peter Kelner was quoted as saying the "shy Tories" had returned: "People said one thing and they did something else at the ballot box."We are now, just a year after last year's national elections, in full election mode here at home. The ascendancy to the leadership of the DA of Mmusi Maimane three weeks ago, and the deployment of Danny Jordaan by the ANC to save the party's bacon in the highly contested Nelson Mandela Bay metro, have kick-started what promises to be a long, exhausting and hard-fought battle.Despite Jordaan's protestations, he is in Port Elizabeth to save the ANC's very precarious position in that metro.The DA has elected Maimane in the belief that he can break the ceiling many say the party has reached in attracting white voters. If it is to be a meaningful opposition and player, the party needs to make deep inroads into the black voter base.In this regard, it has a massive problem. Over the past 21 years it has been pretty tough to find anyone in a black township who would openly admit that he would vote for the DA.Again and again one finds the refrain: "It is a party of whites" or, even worse, that it is the party of apartheid.I have often wondered why this perception persists when the party that sits with the remnants of the National Party is the ANC. After the pact between the DA and the NP crumbled, Marthinus van Schalkwyk led a ragtag team of New National Party vestiges into the ANC in 2004.He was rewarded with a ministry.The DA was left with the toxic label of "the party of apartheid" despite the fact that the NP had found its new home in the warm bosom of the ANC.The DA has never been able to shake off this stink, hence the general perception that it was the party of privilege and of apartheid. Incredibly, one still finds in surveys respondents that express a fear that the DA would "bring back apartheid".Even the powerful memory of a Helen Suzman cannot wipe this perception off.In the run-up to the 2014 election the ANC was faced with a massive problem. Its president, Jacob Zuma, was discredited and was by all accounts a liability. Its deployed cadres were mired in one scandal after another. Service delivery protests were the order of the day while Cosatu was imploding.Yet the party had its "shy voters". Its share of the vote merely slipped from 65.9% to 62%. Given its problems and the bad press it received, the ANC fooled many of us.One analyst had predicted that the ANC would fall to 55% of the vote. He was wrong.So as we enter the noisy election period leading up to next year's local elections, the question is whether there are some among us who are not overtly for the DA but could enter the voting booth and vote for the party of Maimane.Are there "shy DA" voters out there who still find it difficult to express their support for the party but could come out in support of it in the voting booth?The corollary is that Zuma, the ANC leader, remains an embarrassment. Yet his party's brand is still powerful.Many exclaim in public that they find Zuma and his many scandals reprehensible but will still vote for the party of Mandela in the elections.The actions of our "shy voters" will be interesting come the 2016 election. What is that hoary old expression? Tighten your seatbelts. It is going to be a long and bumpy election season...