Lok Sabha Elections 2024: Poll Body Issues Key Stats On Turnout, Political Parties, Women Participation
The study shows as many as 86% of the over 8,300 candidates who contested the Lok Sabha elections lost their deposits.
The Election Commission of India on Thursday released a comprehensive set of 42 statistical reports for the Lok Sabha elections held between April and June this year.
The data sets cover a range of variables, such as details of electors, number of polling stations, voter turnout, partywise vote share, gender-based voting behaviour, state-wise participation of women electors, regional variations, constituency data summary report, performance of national and state parties, winning candidates analysis, constituency-wise detailed results, and many more.
The study shows as many as 86% of the over 8,300 candidates who contested the Lok Sabha elections lost their deposits. The polls were held for a total of 542 seats. Maharashtra tops the list, with 1,020 candidates losing their deposits. Besides, 12,459 nominations were received.
A total of 3,921 independent candidates contested, and only seven of them were elected, while 3,905 forfeited their deposits. The vote share polled by independent candidates was 2.79% of total valid votes.
Six national parties—Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Aam Aadmi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist), and National People's Party—secured a total vote share of 63.35%.
The none of the above (NOTA) category got 63,71,839 votes (0.99%) in 2024 compared to 1.06% in 2019.
Women Participation
The number of female contesting candidates in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections increased to 800, compared to 726 in 2019. Maharashtra had the highest number of female candidates, with 111, followed by Uttar Pradesh with 80 and Tamil Nadu with 77. However, there were no female contesting candidates in 152 out of the 543 parliamentary constituencies.
With regards to the electorate, 65.78% of female electors voted (excluding Surat), slightly surpassing the 65.55% voter turnout among male electors. This marks the second time in the history of general elections that female voter turnout outnumbered male turnout, a trend also seen in 2019.
The parliamentary constituency with the highest female voter turnout was Dhubri in Assam, with 92.17%, followed by Tamluk in West Bengal at 87.57%.
