Unofficial voter turnout at 61% this year, down from staggering 87% in 2008

Highlights

• Participation was significantly lower than record 87.13% in 2008
• Analysts say absence of Awami League from ballot causes lower turnout
• BNP says some groups discouraged voters from attending polling centres

Overall voter turnout in yesterday's 13th parliamentary election stood at an unofficial 61%, significantly lower than many had anticipated for one of the country's most consequential polls in recent history.

In the previous national elections, voter turnout figures used to be announced within several hours. But this year, it was very unusual.

Although the voting ended at 4:30pm, the Election Commission (EC) could not officially announce the overall voter turnout after eight hours. EC sources, however, told TBS that the turnout figure was 61%.

Earlier, at a briefing in the afternoon, Election Commission Senior Secretary Akhtar Ahmed said voter turnout had reached 32.88% at 32,789 polling centres by 12 noon.

Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin, and other officials started announcing the results at the commission premises around 9:30pm. But they did not announce the turnout figure.

EC Secretary Akhtar, instead, facing questions from reporters, said, "We will unveil the turnout after we get the vote counts from 297 or 299 polling centres. So, you will have to patiently wait until then, please."

Jasmine Tuli, Electoral Reform Commission member and former additional secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, expressed her surprise regarding the delay.

"In previous elections, the voter turnout was announced within two hours [of the end of voting]," she told TBS.

Despite expectations of a strong voter presence following the bloody uprising of July 2024, participation fell short of projections shaped by the experiences of previous general elections. The poll was widely seen as a pivotal moment in Bangladesh's political trajectory.

If the turnout figure was really 61% yesterday, it marks a notable decline compared with earlier competitive elections. In the ninth parliamentary election in December 2008, turnout reached 87.13%, a figure often attributed to heightened political enthusiasm and the introduction of photo-based voter identification cards. Participation had already been on an upward trend at the time.

Turnout stood at 75.59% in the 2001 general election, when 54 political parties contested, while the June 1996 election recorded 74.96% participation. The fifth parliamentary election in 1991, held after the fall of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, saw 55.45% of voters cast their ballots.

By contrast, the lowest turnout on record was 20.97% during the sixth election on 15 February 1996, which was boycotted by most major political parties and later scrapped.

Political observers attributed the comparatively lower participation this time primarily to the absence of the Awami League from the ballot, suggesting that many of its supporters stayed away from polling centres.

Some analysts also pointed to disengagement among sections of Generation Z voters, a number of whom reportedly expressed dissatisfaction with the interim government.

Sabir Mustafa, former head of BBC Bangla, said the lack of inclusivity had a direct impact. "The election was not fully inclusive. The exclusion of the Awami League was bound to have a significant impact on overall turnout," he told TBS.

BNP Election Steering Committee spokesperson Mahdi Amin at a press conference in Dhaka yesterday said voter participation could have been higher had some groups not threatened and discouraged people from voting.

"Without such incidents, turnout could have been higher," he said.