Daily Times

The Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN) released a detailed analysis of voters’ participation in the General Election 2024 (GE-2024) as part of its celebration of National Voters Day.

The report, titled ‘GE-2024: Brief on Assessing Demographic and Gender Turnout Dynamics,’ provides an in-depth review of voter trends, including male and female participation, and draws comparisons with the previous general elections.

As many as 61,282,920 voters cast their ballots during GE-2024, which is the highest ever number of voters turning out to vote in any general election.

Notwithstanding the highest-ever number of voters, the turnout dropped to 48 percent, as compared to 52 percent in 2018 as there was an unprecedented increase of 22.5 million voters in electoral rolls between the two elections.

Among many other firsts, the GE-2024 saw the registration of women voters surpassing that of men between 2018 and 2024. Among 22.5 million new voters, 12.5 million were women and 10 million men. This has led to narrowing down the gender gap on voter registration.

Although the women’s turnout remained low (42.7 percent) than men’s turnout (51.8 percent), the gap between their turnouts narrowed from 10 percentage points in GE-2018 to nine percentage points in GE-2024.

The report also highlights a considerably higher voter turnout in predominantly rural constituencies (50.1 percent) as compared to largely urban constituencies (43.8 percent). Nearly twice as many voters from rural areas (40.6 million) cast their ballots compared to urban areas (20.5 million).