Of these 427 seats, 236 were won by the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 while the Congress bagged 44. When seen from the lens of the party that won the constituencies, the analysis shows that on at least 81 seats, 34% of that bagged by the BJP, the turnout has improved, and on 155 seats, about 66%, the turnout has dropped. In the case of the Congress, the turnout was higher on just 12 seats. At least 32 seats that the Congress won in 2019 saw a drop in voter turnout.
Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), with 24 seats, was the third-largest party in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Only on the three seats bagged by the party, the voter turnout has improved this time while on the remaining 21 seats it has dropped compared to 2019.
The Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) won 22 seats in 2019, all in Andhra Pradesh. The analysis shows that on 10 of these seats, the turnout has improved while on 12 it has dropped.
Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), then Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), won nine seats in 2019 and all of these reported higher voter turnouts this time.
Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh and four of these have gone to polls so far. The turnout has dropped in all these seats – Nagina, Saharanpur, Amroha, and Bijnor.
Out of five seats won by the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, only four have seen polling so far, and except Mainpuri, the turnout has dropped in Sambhal, Moradabad, and Rampur.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP emerged as the single largest party with 303 seats, followed by the Congress with 52 seats. The DMK was the third-largest party (24 seats), followed by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and YSRCP with 22 seats each.
The then undivided Shiv Sena bagged 18 seats in 2019 and half of these saw an increase in voter turnouts this time while the remaining nine saw a drop.
Out of the 22 seats bagged by the TMC, 10 have had polling in the first five phases and all of these have reported a drop in overall voter turnout as well as female voter turnout when compared to 2019.
In 154 seats, the female turnout this time was higher than in 2019, while in 273 seats it was lower.
In all the nine seats bagged by the TRS, now BRS, the female turnout has gone up. In 16 of the seats won by the YSRCP, the female turnout was higher this time than in 2019.
In 12 seats where the Congress won in 2019, the female voter turnout was higher than in 2019. In the case of the BJP, the female turnout was higher than in 2019 in 87 seats.
Among the seats where the Congress won in 2019 and reported higher female turnout than the previous year was Raebareli – from 58.11% to 61.42%. The overall turnout improved from 54.33% to 56.33%. In Amethi, bagged by the BJP, the female and average voter turnout has improved this time from 2019.
In Wayanad, where Congress MP Rahul Gandhi won in 2019 and re-contested this time, both the average and female voter turnouts have gone down. The situation was similar in Gandhinagar, where union home minister and BJP MP Amit Shah won last time and is re-contesting, as well as in Thiruvananthapuram, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s seat.
In Nagpur, union minister and BJP MP Nitin Gadkari’s seat, the voter turnout and female turnout have dropped but marginally – by less than one percentage point.
Mathura, from where BJP’s Hema Malini is aiming for a third term, was among the worst-performing seats in terms of voter turnout – from 61.08% in 2019 to 49.41% now. The female voter turnout has dropped to 46.09% this time from 59.12% in 2019.
Out of the five seats that reported the highest drops in female voter turnout, three voted for the BJP in 2019, including two seats from Madhya Pradesh – Rewa and Sidhi. Mathura was in third place from the bottom.
The highest drop so far has been reported in the Nagaland Lok Sabha seat, held by the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party. From 83% in 2019, the voter turnout in the seat plummeted to 56.5% in 2024. The seat reported the lowest female voter turnout as well.
The two seats that reported about a 25-percentage-point jump in voter turnout – Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla and Srinagar – were bagged by the National Conference last time. These two seats also reported the highest rise in female voter turnout.
The impact of the rise and fall in voter turnout can only be revealed after the counting of votes on June 4.
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