The world’s largest elections are finally over.
The world’s largest elections are finally over.
Voter turnout across all seven phases of the election in the world’s largest democracy reportedly averaged above 62%, but in some states, it was greater.
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For instance, Lakshadweep, Sanskrit for “a hundred thousand islands,” may be the smallest Union Territory (UT) of India but it had the best turnout in the country this election with nearly 85% of its residents casting their vote, according to data Quartz collated from the election commission of India’s voter turnout app.
The rest of the top five comprised northeastern states Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, and Assam.
If past is precedent, this is characteristic of the region. Of the 42 elections in which voter turnout was greater than 80%, 31 were in the northeastern states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim, according to The Hindu newspaper’s analysis of assembly election data for all Indian states between 1961 and 2015.
Meanwhile, two of India’s most populous states, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, witnessed some of the lowest voter turnouts. This despite Maharashtra posting a 30-year-high this time.
Jammu & Kashmir fared the worst with a dismal 29.39% voter turnout. During the last election in 2014, too, it recorded the lowest turnout, but was still close to 50%. Almost four in five residents of the valley boycotted the election this time. There were zero votes cast in the village of Burhan Wani, a poster-boy of the gun-wielding Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist group, who was killed by the Indian Army in 2016, and just 15 at the Pulwama suicide bomber’s village.
Come May 23, India will find out whether the currently ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will retain its seat at the top or not.
Read Quartz’s coverage of the 2019 Indian general election here.
