Number of voters logs a surge, but turnout slips

An increase in the number of voters despite a marginal dip in turnout compared to the previous election; an increase in women candidates but a fall in women MPs; and a near-perfect match between the top five parties by parliamentary constituencies and those by the underlying assembly constituencies.

- Nishant Ranjan and Aditi Agrawal

NEW DELHI:

These are among the highlights of the granular data on the 2024 national elections released by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Thursday. While most summary numbers of the election are already available, the data, released as part of a report, also provides a proportion of rejected votes.

A comparison of 2024 numbers with earlier elections shows that turnout in 2024 was lower than in 2019. At the national level, turnout in 2024 stood at 66.1%, 1.3 percentage points lower than in 2019. On a long-term basis, the turnout in 2024 was still the third highest after 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

To be sure, because the registered number of electors increased by 7.4% between 2019 and 2024, the number of voters who turned up to vote increased in absolute terms by 5.3%: from 613.7 million in 2019 to 646.4 million in 2024.