Of the 102 seats that went to polls in the first phase on Friday, 92 recorded a drop in voter turnout, while nine seats showed an increase.
The decline in vote share on these seats is 4.4 per cent, from 69.9 per cent five years ago to 65.5 per cent in 2024.
The nine seats with a higher voter turnout than in 2019 are Assam’s Jorhat and Lakhimpur, Bastar in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra’s Chandrapur, Shillong in Meghalaya, and Tamil Nadu’s Vellore, Coimbatore, Kallakurichi, and Salem. In some cases, the decline in voter turnout was in fractions — Nagpur, Meghalaya’s Tura, and