Lok Sabha Elections 2024 | Jitters as parties look for signs in voter turnout

Bengaluru: BJP and Congress have kept their fingers crossed amid jitters over Friday’s voter turnout numbers as both camps sat down to dissect the polling data.

As per provisional figures, the voter turnout on Friday was 69.23 per cent across 14 Lok Sabha segments. It was 68.95 per cent five years ago.

While political pundits say that voter turnout is not definitive enough to predict poll outcomes, both BJP and Congress expressed confidence that their respective candidates received a good chunk of votes.

BJP general secretary V Sunil Kumar, the convener for the party's Lok Sabha election management committee in Karnataka, said the party received “satisfactory” amount of votes during Friday’s polling.

“We don’t look much at the overall voter turnout. Our booth workers had instructions to ensure party supporters vote before 12 noon. We have an idea as to how many BJP voters there are in a booth. Based on that, we’re satisfied with the polling,” Kumar said.

BJP national general secretary (organisation) BL Santhosh claimed that people showed "affection" for PM Modi by voting in "good numbers". He further said that the 'Modi Ki Guarnatee' would make life difficult for Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy DK Shivakumar.

Congress believes that it polled more votes in rural areas due to the party’s guarantee schemes.

Siddaramaiah said Congress would win “most” of the 14 seats.

Shivakumar was more specific. “We will win 10 out of the 14 seats,” Shivakumar claimed. “Women have decided to vote for us, even those belonging to BJP and JD(S).”

According to Siddaramaiah, Congress and the INDI Alliance would win many of the 102 seats where polling was held in the first phase. "There is no Modi wave. There's a wave in favour of the Congress' guarantees," he said.

Last week, electoral analysis form 5Forty3 Datalabs founder Dr Praveen Patil clarified that voter turnout data is "totally useless" in predicting poll outcomes.

That the voting percentage is very close to that of 2019 could mean saturation, according to Catribil Consulting CEO Venkatesh Thogarighatta. “The Modi factor, which pulled in a lot of new voters in 2014 and 2019, seems to have saturated this time,” he said. “But lack of significant increase in voter percentage perhaps favours the incumbent,” he added.