Amid raging speculations of lower turnout in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections, a report by SBI Research said patterns emerging from the first four phases of polling show 2.5 crore more people have voted compared to the last general election in 2019.
"These first four phases have ensured close to 45.1 crore voters having cast their votes (as compared to 42.6 crore voters casting their votes in the same constituencies in 2019) culminating into 66.95 percent voters’ turnout. Our base case estimates at this juncture puts the incremental number of voters, over and above 2019," said the report released on May 20.
It used data from the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the analysis. On May 17, the ECI said voter turnout of 69.16 percent was recorded in the fourth phase of the polls covering 96 constituencies.
So far, there has been an increase of 6 percent in absolute number of voter turnout in the first four phases with Karnataka (35.5 lakh), Telangana (31.9 lakh) and Maharashtra (20.0 lakh) leading the increase, while Kerala accounts for the largest decline (5.3 lakh), followed by Manipur (3.4 lakh), according to SBI Research.
The report predicts, based on the trends so far, an overall voter turnout of around 67.5 percent for this Lok Sabha elections under a base case scenario, almost equivalent to 67.7 percent in 2019. "This is based on around 96 crore registered electors, of which 65.3 crore are expected to vote cumulatively in this election," it added.
After two phases of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls, ECI doubled up its voter participation interventions to overcome the small drop in turnout.
The Commission had on May 3 said that the turnout for the first two phases of elections somewhat lagged the high benchmarks of 2019.
The SBI Research report further said that for the three successive elections of 2014, 2019 and in 2024, the average incremental voter turnout is a whopping 8 crore, four times the average incremental voter turnout of 2 crore for the 15 elections held before 2014.
The Lok Sabha elections went into its fifth phase on May 20 with 49 constituencies from eight states or Union Territories going to the polls.
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