Almost the same thing happened as was feared since the morning regarding the slow pace of voting. Voters did not show much interest in exercising their franchise in Uttarakhand, especially in the three parliamentary seats with mostly hilly geography – Tehri Garhwal, Garhwal and Almora. This behavior of voters has put political parties and candidates in confusion. Although claims are being made by both BJP and Congress that the voting percentage will be in their favor, the extent to which these are true will be known only after the results are declared on June 4. In such a situation, the question has become important that who will like BJP or Congress, about five and a half percent less voting than last time, i.e. the reverse swing of voter turnout. Despite all the efforts of the Election Commission, only average voting was recorded in all five seats of the state in the elections held for the 18th Lok Sabha. However, this is more than the voting percentage of the first two Lok Sabha elections held after the formation of the state.
Voting percentage was like this in the last Lok Sabha elections
This time the figure of total voting released by the Election Commission till 10 pm on Friday night was 55.89 percent. If we analyze the voting percentage of the Lok Sabha elections held after the formation of the state, an interesting picture emerges.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the voting percentage on all five seats was 48.07 percent. In this, BJP got 40.98 percent, Congress 38.31 percent, SP 7.93 percent and BSP 6.77 percent. That is, BJP got only 2.67 percent more votes than Congress, but it won three seats, while Congress and SP got success in one seat each.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, a total of 53.43 percent voting took place in the state. Out of this, Congress got 43.13 percent votes and BJP got 33.82 percent votes. Congress made a clean sweep by winning all five seats by getting 9.31 percent more votes than BJP. Then Congress benefited from higher voter turnout. Now let’s talk about the last two Lok Sabha elections.
The total voting percentage in the state in the 2014 elections was 61.67 percent, which was 8.24 percent more than the last time. This time, BJP’s share of the total votes was 55.30 percent and Congress’s 34.00 percent. BJP won all five seats by taking 21.30 percent more votes and Congress was left empty handed.
A similar picture was also seen in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. A total of 61.50 percent voters exercised their franchise in this election. In this, BJP got 61.01 percent votes and Congress got 31.40 percent, while BSP got limited to 4.48 percent.
In comparison to the previous elections, in the year 2019, BJP had a lead of 29.61 percent votes over Congress. The result was that BJP won all five seats with a huge margin. This time the low voting percentage compared to last time has confused the political parties and the candidates contesting the elections.
